"In an age, when to every thinking mind it must be matter of serious alarm to witness so general a degeneracy from the spirit and temper of the earlier days of our Reformed Church, it must be peculiarly consoling to have living examples to remind us of the distinguished legal characters of those days, who, to the highest professional reputation, added the still higher praise of genuine piety, unaffected devotion, and extensive Christian knowledge. "From the countenance and co-operation of such characters, refuting the senseless position that Religion is the business of the clergy alone, the study of none but the weak, the ignorant, and the deluded, the teachers of the Gospel must derive singular advantage in their ministerial labours: nor can we but congratulate with every friend of Christianity, when, in support of our claims on the laity to join with us in stemming the torrent of irreligion that is breaking in upon us, we have to plead the instance of one of the most eminent and learned of the profession of the law edifying the public by such productions as, the "Earnest Exhortation to a frequent Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper," and amidst all the toils and fatigues of the bar, that always increase with increasing celebrity, taking an active part in the promotion of every charitable Institution that provides a Christian education for the children of the poor, that reclaims them from vice, or withdraws them from its early contagion, and that opens an asylum to the repenting sinner."

The fubject of the fermon is education, and it is treated with a force of reafoning and glow of eloquence fuited to its vaft importance. To a neglected or an erroneous education are to be attributed most of the evils which deform the prefent age, and threaten to destroy that folidity of principle which has hitherto given the people of this land an elevated diftinction above most of the nations upon earth.

The accurfed maxim, that religious inftruction fhould make no part of the early education of youth, is moft ably combated and exposed in this fermon; and the bishop exhibits its deftructive confequences in a faithful picture of modern manners in what is called the fashionable world, and in those who are foolishly emulous to imitate the corruptions. of the upper ranks of life.

"Departing from the wise and sober example of our ancestors, the sons and daughters of the country gentleman and the wealthy trader are, in our days, trained in the same course as the nobles and highest commoners of the land; and our modern system of education is, so far, like most other modern systems, that it is fram ad and calculated to level all distinctions and confound all ranks. -So far is this true, that it extends through all the gradations of these conditions amongst us. Each treads so close on the other

that there appears to be a general contest and emulation in tricking out the youth of both sexes as creatures designed for no higher aims, or more exalted objects, than are to be attained by external appearances, and what are called fashionable accomplishments, to the neglect of all the religion of Jesus Christ teaches as most essential to their present, and exclusively essential to their future happiness.

"On these external appearances, and these fashionable accom plishments no expences are spared, no assiduities. The great ob ject is to provide for what we deem the good things of this world. To give our sons those acquirements that shall fit them to appear with advantage on the public stage of life, to maintain their rank, or to raise themselves to wealth and consequence. It is to fashion and form our daughters for admiration, and to adorn them for advantageous pursuit.

"If those to whom we intrust them from their earliest days, not as assistants but as substitutes, to whom we altogether transfer the duties which nature and nature's God have imposed upon our selves, should snatch a few moments from the various occupations that are enjoined them, to give their pupils of either sex some idea of God or of religion, 'tis well: but in how comparatively few 'instances does it form any part of the stipulation of the parent on purchasing their services?-And as for morals, who but priests or bigots, or the dupes of bigots and priests, would look for them to the dull and antiquated pages of the Scriptures, or to books written in their spirit and inculcating their maxims?-The morals of a gentleman are to be learned from such fashionable volumes as those in which simulation and dissimulation are recommended by parental authority. Where the father inculcates to his son lessons of seduction, systematically delivered and experimentally enforced; and where the disgrace of families, and the destruction of their peace in the infidelity of the wife, are adduced as the best proof he can give of an education becoming his condition, as his best recommendation to universal acceptance whenever he presents himself, and a security of success in all his pursuits.

"Latterly, we have even seen exceeded what, not twenty years ago, was considered as a system deserving universal abhorrence and execration. The pupil of Chesterfield would be an object of love, compared with him who is left to be early initiated in the doctrines of our modern philosophers; and we should be almost reconciled to the polished vices of the one when placed in contrast with the vulgar, disgusting, shocking immoralities, and brutal licentiousness of the other.

"For the daughters another school is opened-The School of Novels and Romance ;-the School of Modern Female Morality, -In that school, to purify their principles and rectify their morals, the senses must be seduced, and the passions inflamed. There the great master in this art, the canonised philosopher of Geneva, leads his youthful pupil through all the blandishments of voluptu ousness, all the violence of unrestrained desires, all the wild fancies

of

of a heated imagination; and by every insidious attack on all the venerable prejudices and sacred institutions that have ever hitherto preserved the sanctity and purity of the union between the sexes, raises her to the sublime character of a female philosopher, and of that monster of Christian days, a female Deist.

"In that school are taught the Rights of Women. There the emancipated sex are instructed to shake off all the shackles with which they have been hitherto clogged by tyrannical custom and usurping prejudices; to break into all the provinces that have been hitherto supposed to belong exclusively to the rougher sex; to cast away every restraint that has hitherto guarded the lips of the modest virgin and the chaste matron; to pry into those secrets of nature, the very mention of which has been hitherto considered as incompatible with female delicacy, and to indulge in as unrestrained a freedom of language, as in an unbounded freedom of thinking.*

"In that school, all the art and magic of the stage, all the fascinating power of those transcendent talents, that give reality to fiction, and that so irresistibly dispose the young and warm heart to act what so forcibly awakens all its feelings, and to be what it beholds with such interest and delight, all are employed to under. mine the principles in which the female character is formed to soften, polish, and improve life: they are employed to recommend to pity, to commiseration, to affection, to respect, the adultress,the adultress who, to the foulest crime that can be committed against religion or society, against the laws of God or man, adds the blackest ingratitude, and dishonours the bed of her benefactor and husband; while, by a refinement in the science of depraving the heart and debasing the principles, it is left in doubt, in the play to which you all know I allude,† whether that husband is to be an object of hatred, and branded with the imputation of brutality for not going the full length of the feelings which the poet has awakened in his audience, or whether he conforms himself to their sentiments; descends to what even the maxims of the world so universally, and as it were instinctively, condemn as shocking and degrading; reconciles himself to his own shame; takes pollution to his arms; and commits the children of his love to the care and direction of that unnatural mother who forgot all she owed them, and involved them in her own disgrace and infamy!

The Rights of Women, by Mrs. Wolstencroft.

The Stranger.-Hopes have been entertained that the taste for these German Plays was one of those novelties, that soon wear themselves out, and that our stage would not be long disgraced by them but the Stranger, palliating adultery, and Pizarro, debasing the Christian Religion below all others, are still among our stock plays, and continue to be exhibited with the whole strength of the Theatre.

"O unhappy

"O unhappy parent, who exposest thy beloved child, the hope and pride of thy house, to such seductions, and strange and almost impossible to think, the very best thus expose their daughters! canst thou expect that she shall escape contagion ? canst thou expect that, with her imagination thus tainted and her mind thus debauched; without a single antidote, without a single principle of religion or pure morality to support and preserve her, she shall resist the thousand temptations that may assail her in her intercourse through life? Canst thou hope or flatter thyself that sha shall carry into the house of an husband that innocent and spotless mind, those chastened affections, pure charities, and matron vir tues, that blessed the union of those who have been educated in other days, and with other principles ?-As well mayest thou be lieve all the wild fancies of her own seducing romances, or give credit to the miraculous legend that tells thee of the female probationer, who walked blindfold through burning ploughshares unsinged and unhurt."

We earnestly recommend this discourfe to the ferious confideration of all parents in particular, and indeed to every person who has any value for the vital interests of fociety.

The Beneficial Effects of the Chriftian Temper on Domestic Happiness. 8vo. pp. 91. Hatchard.

TH

2s. 6d.

HIS tract is intended as a kind of supplement to the venerable bishop of London's Treatife on "The Be"neficial Effects of Chriftianity on the Temporal Concerns "of Mankind," and it is executed in fuch a manner as to render it no unworthy companion of that excellent perfor

mance.

The importance of the fubjects difcuffed will fufficiently appear from the table of contents, as follows:

"Introduction.-General Observations on the Christian Character. On the beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper between Parent and Child.-On the Importance of Christian Conduct between Brothers and Sisters.On the Christian Duties of a Wife.

On the Christian Duties of a Husband. On the Blessings of the Christian Temper in Society.-On the Importance of Humility, in forming the Christian Character.-A Summary of the Christian Character.-On Christian Conduct under Injury and Oppression. The Christian's View of Death."

T

Vol. XIII. Churchm. Mag. for August 1807.

As a specimen of the work we shall extract the seventh chapter.

"On the Importance of Humility in forming the Christian

Character.

"To strike at the root of corruption in the human heart, is the most important work of the zealous Christian: and on a diligent examination of the source of our sins, it will be found, that pride is the greatest enemy of our virtue and peace.

"Opposed to this vice, is the virtue of humility, so strongly and repeatedly enforced by our Saviour, and his Apostles. Al most all Christian perfection rests upon it: but here again, selfdeceit misleads us, and we place to the account of virtue, what is in itself a vice. Many people fancy they possess humility, when nothing is further from their hearts; nay, the very pride of being humble, is one of their sensations.

"I once heard a female say, 'I am of such an humble temper I cannot bear reproof; I want praise and encouragement, I require to think better of myself than I do; the good opinion of others is `necessary to me, I can do nothing right without it.'-It may however be truly asserted, that the virtue of humility formed no part of her character; on the contrary, the most absurd and over. weening pride and vanity were her predominant qualities.

"Genuine humble Christians know, that their lives and conduct are little else than imperfection; that they are constantly requiring reproof and admonition; that it is always good for them; they will be thankful for it, in whatever shape, or from whatever source it comes; and they will shrink from praise and admiration, as from their greatest enemies. And, should some reproofs reach them, which they may think are unjust; they will always remember as a balance, how much, that is wrong in them. selves, escapes the notice of others.

"On an humble sense of our own imperfections, is founded that tenderness and forbearance towards the imperfections of others, which is the source of peace and good will. A censorious and proud spirit sows dissensions in society; and who art thou that judgest another?" a miserable sinful creature, hourly rebelling against a good and merciful God, and disobeying the pre cepts of thy Holy Religion; and though possibly free from the sin thou condemnest in another,daily committing sins of a different nature, as offensive, and perhaps more so, in the sight of thy Maker.

"Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Shall we be perpetually cavilling at the mote in our brother's eye, and forget the beam in our own; Humility

Romans xiv. 4, 10, 13.-See also the second chapter of Romans. Romans ii. 21.

would