HUMANITY OF THE JEWISH LAW.

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object, we adhere so scrupulously to that part, which furnishes us with a pretext for sanguinary enactments? Nor will I urge the important distinction between the covenant of fear and bondage, and that of freedom and of love. I will content myself with contrasting our laws with the laws of Moses; I will not raise our standard so high, as to look among us for Christian laws. I repeat it, I shall be satisfied, if we be found to have enacted none, that are unjewish.

Against what transgressions does the Jewish law enact capital punishment? Against none but those that profane the temple of the Lord and his holy things, and those that defile the individual or the community. To preserve purity is the only purpose of capital punishment, as enacted by divine authority. How does this matter stand with us? What do our laws enact concerning the man who profaneth the Lord's sanctuary, or breaketh his sabbath, or defileth his neighbour's wife? Are these deemed worthy of death among us? I do not wish that they should be so punished; but I cannot see why of those offences, which are considered most culpable in the divine code, we should make lightest; why those transgressions, which could not, in the institutions established by God, be blotted out unless by the blood of the offender, should be atoned for, among us, with money, the great idol and scape-goat of our institutions; whilst for that very money's sake we do not scruple, to take away man's life, which God has never, either ordained or permitted, to be taken away for any earthly thing? If the divine legislation for the elect nation be our pattern, why do we not abide by those clear and humane enactments, which the Jewish law contains, respecting offences against property? Will any one dare to say, that those laws are not applicable to our state of things? Very likely, indeed! But what does that prove, but that a state of society, for which the laws of God are too humane, is an ungodly state, one which ought on no account to be endured without reproof, and, by those to

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whom power is given, without improvement. Here is the source of the severity of our criminal laws; our love to Mammon causes us to forget the love, we owe to our fellow-creatures; our attachment to our earthly treasures makes us unmindful of those heavenly treasures, of which, in so many thousands of children, we are appointed the guardians. Our anxiety to preserve every shilling in every man's pocket, is the great obstacle to our preserving Christ in every soul, and every soul in Christ.

This leads me to the great principle, on which the duty of giving every child a christian education, rests, and by which, therefore, we must be regulated in the choice and application of our means. But as this point is chiefly involved in the consideration of the second question, I reserve the subject for my next lecture.

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LECTURE III.

TO WHAT SORT AND DEGREE OF EDUCATION CAN EVERY HUMAN INDIVIDUAL, AS SUCH, LAY CLAIM, INDEPENDENTLY OF RANK, FORTUNE, OR ANY OTHER DISTINCTION?

In the two preceding lectures I have endeavoured to demonstrate the respective duties of the family and of society at large, respecting the education of children belonging to them; and I have urged the fulfilment of the much neglected duty of society in this respect, especially on the ground, that the whole of human life, with all that belongs to it or arises out of it, has, or at least ought to have, according to the divine sanction, no other purpose than that of leading man to the knowledge of a merciful Father, and a redeeming Saviour, and to bring him, as far as human agency can do, under the influence of the restoring and sanctifying spirit of God. I have called your attention to the awful consequences, arising out of a state of society, in which that important fact is lost sight of; and I have, at the close of my last lecture, pointed out one of the chief causes of the neglect and indifference, of which, as a body, we are guilty. But I am aware, that the mercantile spirit of our institutions, is not the only impediment to the general discharge of the duty, which devolves upon us, as

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DOCTRINAL OBSTRUCTION OF THE TRUTH.

Christians, to receive every little child in the name of our Lord and Master. There is an obstacle far more difficult to be overcome, because it militates, not against the practice, which has been recommended, but against the very principle, on the ground of which alone that practice can ever be effectually enforced or adopted. There are many who, although agreeing in the whole, or in most of what has been said, concerning the responsibility of the community for the temporal and eternal welfare of its members, and concerning the baneful and deplorable consequences of the present system, will, nevertheless, stand out with all their might against the acknowledgment of the fundamental principle, on the truth and vital apprehension of which both, the reality of the view which has been taken of the subject, and the efficacy of its practical adaptation to the wants of our age, entirely depend.

There are many who, in matters of education as well as in others, are ready to admire, and, if it be urged, to put on "a form of godliness," but who, at the same time, "deny the power thereof." But what is the form without the power, the letter without the spirit ?—Nothing but a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones. Away then, with the idea of a compromise of principle, by which popularity might indeed be gained to the subject, and an apparent success insured, but at the expense of all that renders it worth advocating-so that our last state would be worse than our first. I am aware, that what I have said already, is sufficient to turn away from me all those with whom a deep interest in religion, and a conviction of the necessity of its universal application to the affairs of men, is a ground of decided objection, and a source of unconquerable prejudice; and it may therefore seem unwise, that I should engage in a controversy, which will at once enlist in the ranks of my adversaries, not only the greatest, but also the most busy, the most zealous, and the most influential part of what is termed the religious world. But it is not my object to gain men, unless it be, that I may gain them to the truth,

COMPROMISE UNLAWFUL.

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and so I have no motive, even if I had a right, to waive the truth, for the sake of gaining them. But I have more than one motive, because more than one call of duty, to declare it as explicitly, as emphatically, as possible. Even with reference to the success of the cause which I am advocating, my only wisdom is, to speak out boldly, in defiance of all prejudice and of all narrow-mindedness,—in defiance of the deafness, which I may produce in the notreligious, and of the slander which I may call forth, in the religious world. My observation has furnished me with but too many instances, in which a good, a great, and sacred object, however fully understood by those with whom it originated, was entirely marred in its progress, and ultimately defeated, by an anxiety of gaining the popular voice in its favour, which led to endless modifications and qualifications of the original purpose. Such men-pleasing prudence may become the worldling, who has nothing to rely on, for the attainment of his object, but his own strength, and his own means; but it is utterly unworthy of the Christian, who is labouring for the fulfilment, not of his own, but of the divine purpose, and who, therefore, if he have any faith, must implicitly rely on the power, and on the means of Him, in whose service he is engaged. The slightest temptation to suppress one iota of the truth, from the fear of men, or from the desire of pleasing them, is an evidence that the spirit of this world has yet a hold upon his soul-and the great extent to which this is the case in the present day, among the bulk of Christian professors, is the chief prop of all the bigotry and sectarianism, by which this generation is defiling the pure doctrine of Jesus. It is in vain, that this cowardice covers its nakedness with the cloak of charity; that spirit which foregoeth or compoundeth the truth from a wish for popularity, is a far more cowardly, a far more unfaithful spirit, than that, which denies it under the influence of fear; and so far from deserving the name of christian charity, it ought to be stigmatized as enmity against