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sistence, if they forgot their earthly purposes, and sought nothing but the kingdom of heaven! And how little would there, then, be of that vain religious talk, by which the professing world are now endeavouring to disguise from themselves the absence of real religious feeling, in the greater part of their social relations, and of their daily transactions. This would be a new earth, indeed; in which an orthodox saint, with the swelling arrogance of his doctrinality, and the self-complacent consciousness of his religious popularity, would feel himself quite as new, as the haughty merchant, who thinks himself responsible for nothing but his bills of exchange, and estimates the value of men by pounds sterling.

But I must not indulge myself further in the contemplation of a spectacle, which, considering the present condition of society, seems more like a fanciful fairy tale, than like the description of a state of things, to which we are approaching. Distant as the prospect may appear to some, the period, when these things will be realized, is perhaps not very remote; it may be brought about with unexpected rapidity in consequence of the very re-action, which the present tendency of the social institutions and of the public spirit, must infallibly produce. There is a freedom given to man, and a power of choosing and following his own way-but to that freedom, and to that power, there is a limit: there is a point where the hand of the Lord is stretched out against him, forbidding him to go any farther; at a distance it is a warning hand, reminding him that God's purpose is not to be slighted; but if he give not heed to that admonition, if he run on in his blindness, that hand grasps him up from the path of his folly, and, with the strength of Omnipotence, throws him back to the starting point, from whieh he may begin a new career. How many of these shocks has our species experienced, by which the tide of its life was suddenly arrested, the power gathered up during the course of centuries, annihilated as with a breath, and the slowly

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REACTION WHICH IT MUST PRODUCE.

recovering energies forced, to seek out a new direction, in which to grow and to act. It is such another shock that will overtake us in the midst of our mutual congratulations, our boasts of improvement. The hand of the Lord is stretched out against this generation, and against its way. Yet would there be time, if we had ears to hear, and eyes to perceive; if we were not rushing on headlong into ruin. But though the mass will not hear, either of the danger, or of the means of rescue, there are some at least, who perceive the true position of things, and who are ready to embrace the true remedy. They will be instruments in the hand of God for the comforting and re-establishing of the multitude, who will be utterly dismayed, when all their schemes prove abortive. And it is with reference to those few rather, than with the hope of producing a more general effect, that I would urge the necessity of excluding from the education of our children, all those fictitious purposes, by which our own characters are distorted, our tendencies misdirected, our powers marred. If we mean to educate our children for the days which they shall see, we must not endeavour to fit them for the present state of things; for, as the Jews, that had seen the meat-pots of the Egyptians, were unfit to see the Holy Land, so will the men nurtured up in the principles and for the purposes of our age, be unfit to witness and to co-operate in that great reform, on the eve of which we stand.

This my conviction, however, of an impending change, although it may place the necessity of giving our children an education, altogether independent of the purposes to which we are subservient, in a stronger light, is by no means the only or even the chief ground, on which I would recommend such a course of proceeding. It holds good as a general principle, indispensably connected with the law of progress, to which man, in his present condition, is subject, that no child can be well prepared for the time, in which he will be a man, if he be fitted for the state of things, as it is at the time of his childhood. Nor is this

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the first time that the too common practice of training children up as slaves of our notions, our feelings, our habits and customs, our institutions and our purposes, has been objected to. There have been some, though not many, who have acknowledged and urged the necessity of an education, independent of the individual's station in society. Rousseau, among others, has made this point very prominent in his theory of education; instead of training man for the present state of society, he proposes educating him for a state of nature; but Rousseau, who, on all occasions, evinced more penetration in laying bare that which is wrong, than in pointing out what is right, discovers, on this head also, more negative than positive truth. His supposed state of nature is far more unnatural, than even the most artificial state of society for it is neither the state in which man was intended to be, nor that in which he actually is, or ever was. It is a fancied state, for ever unattainable, because founded on an erroneous view of human nature, as well as of man's position in the world. But what renders

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Rousseau's plan far more exceptionable, is the object which he is avowedly aiming at, viz., to educate the child with regard to his insulated self, for the purpose of insuring to him as much as possible, of independent happiness. This is a human, and, even in a human point of view, a selfish purpose, and an education founded upon it, must, therefore, under all circumstances, be a false education. It is wrong to educate man for other men, or, as is often the case, for the imaginations of other men; but it is no less wrong to educate him for himself. It is not right to educate him for an artificial state of society, but it is no improvement upon this, to educate him for a supposititious state of nature. The only true education is that which educates man for God, and for that state, for which God has destined him ; an education for the purpose of God, and by the means of God.

It is this education, and no other, which is to be given

to every individual, without distinction or exception, because God is not a respecter of persons; it is this and no other, to which I wish to call your attention. Concerning the purpose, which is the restoration of man, I have already explained myself, I trust, explicitly enough to prevent all misunderstanding; and I have likewise, at the beginning of the present lecture, clearly stated what I consider to be the chief means, appointed by God for the attainment of it, that means, in which all other means must concentrate, from which they must all receive their life, in order to become truly efficient. It then remains for us to examine, what those subordinate means are, or, in other words, we must ask :-" what is there in man, capable of receiving that life and light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world?"

In order to answer this question, it will be necessary to enter somewhat more deeply into the constitution of man's soul; or, if the term may be allowed, his psychical† organization, the knowledge of which is,-next to the faith in the indwelling of the true life and light, and the union with that power in perfect love-the most essential requisite in those who wish successfully to cultivate the field of edu、 cation. Unfortunately, that knowledge has hitherto been but little cultivated; a few vague notions, which, upon close examination, are found to be, most of them, contradictory with each other, arranged in the shape of a system,

* From the Greek word Psyche, soul. We have from the word qúois the words physical, physiology, physiological, and there seems no reason why there should not be analogous derivatives from ux, psychical, belonging or referring to the soul, psychology, the science of the soul (so inadequately and clumsily called "philosophy of the human mind") and psychological, belonging or referring to that science. The entire absence of these, or any other terms of the same import, is, no doubt, owing to the want of the thing itself, for which the name psychology is here proposed. For the science styled "philosophy of the human mind," is but very small portion of the science of the whole soul of man, and that small portion has hitherto not had justice done to it. But it seems that more attention begins to be paid to that important branch of knowledge, and I trust, the terms proposed will soon become indispensable in the English language.

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and supported by the enumeration of a variety of facts, many of which might as well serve to prove the reverse of what they are adduced for, this is the thing honoured with the name philosophy of the human mind. No wonder, then, that metaphysics have fallen into such general discredit, and that the study of them is considered either useless or dangerous. The objection, that men of eminent talent, nay, men of decided piety, have been engaged in the inquiry, cannot avail, either to set aside the popular prejudice, or to refute the accusation, that the science of the human mind is in a most deplorable condition. If the inquiry be undertaken on a false ground, talent can only serve to make error more complicated, and therefore the confusion greater; although, perhaps, outwardly less apparent. It is not sufficient, that a man should have collected a number of phenomena of the mind, and offered an explanation of them, which, by its acuteness, excites our admiration. His explanations may be exceedingly clever, and yet, on this very account, perhaps, far from correct: his view of human nature may be nothing but a system of errors, and yet it may be a highly ingenious production of the mind. But the very fact that our philosophies of the human mind are productions of the human mind, is the reason why we are yet so backward in the knowledge of human nature; it is not an ingenious explanation of the most striking or the most puzzling phenomena, we want, but a simple statement of the causes from which those phenomena proceed; and this is not a matter of invention, but a matter of discovery and acknowledgment. Hitherto, however, the conceit of the sufficiency of the rational powers of man for the establishment of truth, has been so universal,—even among the religious world, who entertain it with reference to every branch of human knowledge, religion alone excepted, that the lawfulness of forming hypotheses in matters of science, provided they be supported by a number of facts, sufficient to make them appear probable, has never been called in question. Hypothesis,

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