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same time, the attention is to be fixed upon the distinction between the good impulses, and the power of acting rightly, which are derived from God; and the corrupt tendencies of man's own nature, and his natural incapability to do the good. As the Jews, during the prophetic period, made, nationally, the experience of the difference between a life with God, and in obedience to him, and one without God, and in opposition to him, so ought every child individually to make the same experience, and the teacher's duty is, to concentrate the child's faculties upon self-observation, in such a manner as to enable him to gather the fruits of it with consciousness, and with intelligence. The prospect of an improved state, by a perfect submission to, and union with, the divine life, will, in the child's mind, be the natural result of all this.

As the above course of instruction proceeds, the child should be made acquainted with the history of the Old Testament, presenting the leading events in an unbroken chain, and inserting such of the prophecies, psalms, and other writings of the old canon, as are within the child's comprehension, at those periods to which they refer. Those who have never seen what practical instruction is, would be surprised, no doubt, to witness the effect, which these two parallel courses would produce, if the experiment were tried, and to observe, what constant reference the child would make, from his own heart to the record of revelation, and from the record of revelation back to his own heart. Such a familiar acquaintance with the dealings of God with mankind, in what might be called the childhood of our species, and with the parallel case in the history of his own heart, is the only preparation, by which a child can be enabled to comprehend the mission of Jesus Christ, as regards, generally, the Jewish Church and the world, and himself individually. With how different a feeling, and with how much more enlightened an understanding, would he then listen to the history of that God-Man, through whom sinful earth was reconciled to heaven, and

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the power of heaven brought down upon earth, to reform and to renew it. Every word would then have its weight, and every word would bear its fruit. And how natural would the transition then be, from the life of Jesus to the glorification of the Lord's anointed, and the inspiration of his messengers; how enlightening, instead of puzzling, would then the Apostolic doctrine be; and how fruitful the retrospect over the whole of the divine dispensations! This, and no other, is the way to render the Bible a book of true and everlasting interest; not a book taken up from habit, or from the fear of man, or, perhaps, one step higher, the fear of hell; but a book of inexhaustible treasures, affording to the soul rich subjects of meditation, concerning the wonderful dealings of God with his fallen creatures, to which the constant, at last even unconscious and inevitable reference, from universal facts to individual experience, would give, as regards knowledge, an ever renewed interest, and, as regards the fruits of faith, an inexpressible value.

There is but one objection to the pursuit of this plan, which I think it worth while answering, because I can conceive, that it may occur to minds, sincerely anxious for the best, however opposed it may be to what they have hitherto held. It will be said, this may be education and instruction on the ground of the Bible; but it is not instruction in the name of Christ. It is true that the name of Jesus Christ, will not for some time be introduced to the child's ear; but does that preclude the teacher's acting in the name, that is to say, from obedience to, and through faith in Christ? Does it preclude the agency of Christ in the child's heart being made the foundation of all instruction? And farther I would ask : Is the Lord God, who led the Jews out of Egypt, and brought them into the Land of Canaan, who raised up the prophets amongst them, and filled their temple with his glory, any other than Christ, the everlasting Word? Let us not be deceived by sounds. The use of the name

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CHRISTIAN TALMUD.

"Jesus Christ," does not constitute a Christian education, which, on the contrary, consists, in showing Christ to the child, so as he himself has showed himself to man. And, therefore, as he showed himself to man, first as the Lord Jehovah, and afterwards as Christ Jesus, we ought in the same manner to make him known to our children. The practical difference is this: by following the example given by the successive progress of revelation, we put the child in possession of the full idea of what Jesus Christ was, before we give him the name; in the other case, we give him the name, before he has, nay before he can have, the idea; so that, by the time when his mind becomes sufficiently matured to receive the idea, the long continued vain use of the name has rendered the subject hackneyed, and thus destroyed, in the bud, the very essence of religion. It is deplorable, indeed, to see the desperate hurry in which parents and teachers are, in the present day, to render their children conversant with the whole of the Bible, and to furnish them with their own explanations of it; so that it is not an uncommon thing, to see children of ten or twelve years, who have had, what is called a religious education, ready to explain the most difficult passages, for instance, of St. Paul's Epistles, and being so fully satisfied with their sufficient knowledge of the whole, that they never evince the slightest desire to know any more. And how should they? They are in the same state as Rabbinical Jews, who will tell you of every passage of the Old Testament, what is the real meaning of it, and thereby they rest satisfied; in the same manner, our children learn, wherever they receive a careful religious education, the exact meaning of each passage, sanctioned by an authority, as weighty in the religious world, as the Talmud among the Jews, viz. the common consent of the respective denomination. Hence it is, that the Christian Church has become a valley of dry bones, in which "a noise," and "a shaking," and "the breath of the Lord God," are much wanted. To

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acknowledge the truth of these observations, and to embrace the remedy proposed, our age, however, lacketh one thing, which is repentance. It is true that judgment has become a fashionable topic for preaching, but it is a preaching of judgment without repentance, and mostly without charity. I have heard judgment preached against Catholics, against Unitarians, against Jews, against the Continental Churches, against the German Neologists, against the Dissenters, against the Arminian party of the Church of England; but never have I heard judgment and repentance preached to the Evangelical religious world against itself; and yet there it is, where judgment seems most imminent, and repentance most needed; inasmuch as there the greatest light has been diffused, so that out of their own mouths they will be condemned. They who know that Jesus Christ is the one and everlasting foundation, that he is all and in all, they who preach it on the housetops, they are, certainly, of all, the most guilty, if they lead the rising generation to the knowledge of Jesus Christ so, that he can be to them nothing but a mere name, and a mere shadow. To acknowledge that this is the case, they must humble themselves, and confess that in them the salt has lost its savour; and their unwillingness to do this, otherwise than in unmeaning phrases of ostentatious prayer meetings, is the reason why they are blind to the nameless injury which they inflict upon thousands of little children, regardless of the woes, which He, whose name they invoke, has denounced against whosoever shall offend one of these little ones.

But, stiffnecked as the Lord's people among the Gentiles have generally become, there are yet amongst them those that use their ears for hearing, and their eyes for perceiving; and, for their sakes, to convince them, that the picture I have drawn of the present system of religious instruction, is not overcharged, it will, I think, not be amiss for me to notice here a publication, which has recently appeared on that subject, and which has been

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MR. GALL'S SABBATH SCHOOL SYSTEM.

received with the greatest approbation in some quarters; and, where it was objected to, it was only because it was found too great an improvement upon the old system. Its title is, "The End and Essence of Sabbath School Teaching, and Family Religious Instruction;" its author, Mr. Gall, from Edinburgh, in London a well-known man. Such a work, published within the last four years, and since spread in four editions over the whole kingdom, is certainly a document, to which an opponent may safely refer, without rendering himself Hable to the accusation of having charged the system with defects which it never had.

Without stopping to discuss the doctrinal part of Mr. Gall's book, I shall at once proceed to the practical lessons, which are recommended, and the mode of using which, is described at full length. In the chapter, " on the separating and proving of doctrines," (page 111) we find, among others, the following evidence of the reliance which is placed by our religious teachers upon a mere mechanical knowledge of words, and jingle of sounds. "When the "doctrines have been separated," says Mr. Gall, "the "children should be made to prove them by passages of "Scripture, the teacher taking care that these passages "themselves be thoroughly understood, and their connec❝tion with the doctrine clearly perceived. It is here also "that the DOCTRINES IN RHYME' should be revised in "connection with the proofs, that they may be so fixed "in the memory, and so well understood, as to come "readily to the recollection at any future period. The "tenacity with which children retain stanzas in the me

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mory, renders this recommendation of great importance, "as, IF THESE BE NOW WELL LEARNED AND UNDER"STOOD, there will, at no period of life, be almost any "leading truth or duty, in the whole range of Christian "doctrine, which, when its nature is required to be known, "the child will not be able at once to give, WITH ALL ITS "CONCOMITANTS, in its particular section, in the Doc"trines in Rhyme,' or by itself, in the stanza of that