EDUCATION IN NEW YORK.

ACCORDING to the annual report of the New York superintendent of public instruction, there are in that State 11,748 school districts, 900,532 children attending the public schools, 53,764 attending private schools, besides 5243 in schools for coloured children, and 38,734 in academies; making an aggregate of 953,454. The number of children who attend school less than two months in the year is 210,500, and of those who attend between two and four months, is 219,151. The amount of school money received by the trustees of school districts, or boards of education, during the year, was $3,046,430. In his last annual report, the superintendent recommends that school officers be paid for their services, in order to insure the improvement of the country schools.

PATENTS ISSUED IN 1855.

THE whole number of patents issued in the year 1855 was 1943. The number for additional improvements was ten, and the number of re-issues forty-nine. The number for designs, included in the totals above stated, was sixty-seven. The Pen and Lever gives the residence of the parties to which patents were issued during the year as follows:—

Choughts to be Chought of.

THE SABBATH A DIVINE INSTITUTION.

THE seventh-day commandment is not found among the ordinances transcribed from a pattern in the ministration of Moses, but it was solemnly reenacted in the publication of the moral law. It was the fourth among_ten commandments given as no other commandments were ever given. This appears specially in three particulars:-First, all the details of the Jewish ceremonial were given to Moses, and by him communicated to the people. But the Ten Commandments, including the one now before us, were spoken to the whole nation, by the voice of God himself. This appears on the face of the history. Was not this to invest Moses with a degree of importance relative to the ceremonial institutions, which was denied to him as regarded the moral commandments? And was not this to invest the moral commandments with a superiority above and independent of Moses? Secondly, the moral commandments alone were written, engraved by God himself, by a direct and immediate exercise of his power, and thus secured from any possible mixture, addition, or mutilation, by the infirmity of a human instrumentality. And so important was this, that, when the tables were broken, a special commandment was given to prepare new tables, and again the same sacred words were inscribed by the finger of God. Thirdly, the Ten Commandments alone were put into the ark and deposited in the most holy place. This fact is plain, and it involves a clear and very significant separation between these commandments and the ceremonial institutions of the Jews. The sanction of the commandment is exclusively the Divine authority. It was on this account that this commandment was given as a sign to the Jewish people in the inspired ministry of the prophets, as it is written,-"Behold I have given you my Sabbaths, to be a sign between you and me to know whether ye will serve the Lord."-McNeile.

THE IVY IN THE DUNGEON.

BY CHARLES MACKAY.

THE ivy in the dungeon grew,

Unfed by rain, uncheered by dew;

Its pallid leaflets only drank

Cave-moistures foul and odours dank.

But through the dungeon-grating high
There fell a sunbeam from the sky;
It slept upon the grateful floor
In silent gladness evermore.

The ivy felt a tremor shoot
Through all its fibres, to the root;
It felt the light, it saw the ray,
It strove to blossom into day.

It grew, it crept, it pushed, it clomb:
Long had the darkness been its home;
But well it knew, though veiled in night
The goodness and the joy of light.

Its clinging roots grew deep and strong;
Its stem expanded firm and long;
And in the currents of the air

Its tender branches flourished fair.

It reached the beam; it thrilled, it curled;
It blessed the warmth that cheers the world;
It rose towards the dungeon-bars,

It looked upon the sun and stars;

It felt the life of bursting spring,
It heard the happy sky-lark sing;
It caught the breath of morns and eves,
And wooed the swallow to its leaves.

By rains and dews and sunshine fed,
Over the outer walls it spread;
And in the day-beam, waving free,
It grew into a steadfast tree.

Upon that solitary place

Its verdure threw adorning grace;
The mating birds became its guests,
And sang its praises from their nests.

Wouldst know the moral of the rhyme?
Behold the heavenly light, and climb;
To every dungeon comes a ray
Of God's interminable day.

THE BIRTH OF PAPACY.

FROM Gibbon, Neander, and Mosheim, we learn that, in the fourth century, monks, monasteries, convents, penance, church councils, with church control of conscience, excommunication, the perfume of flowers, the smoke of incense, wax tapers in the churches at noonday, prostrate crowds at the altar drunk with fanaticism or wine, imprinting devout kisses on the walls, and supplicating the concealed blood, bones, or ashes of the saints, idolatrous frequenting martyrs' tombs, pictures and images of tutelar saints, veneration of bones and relics, gorgeous robes, tiaras, crosses, pomp, splendour, and mysticism, were seen everywhere and were the order of the day; and, says Mosheim :-"The new species of philosophy imprudently adopted by Origen and many other Christians was extremely prejudicial to the cause of the gospel and to the beautiful simplicity of its celestial doctrines;" and Gibbon writes that, "If in the beginning of the fifth century Tertullian or Lactantius had been raised from the dead to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation at the profane spectacle which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation." Martyr-worship was very common; and Eunapius the Pagan, A. D. 396, exclaimed:-"These are the gods that the earth nowadays brings forth, these the intercessors with the gods-men called martyrs; before whose bones

and skulls, pickled and salted, the monks kneel and lie prostrate, covered with filth and dust." The mystery of iniquity worked like leaven, and, to use the words of Coleridge, "the pastors of the church had gradually changed the life and light of the superstitions they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganized Christianity in order to christen Paganism." Dr. Cumming remarks that "the great multitude consisted of embryo Papists; and what we call Puseyism in the nineteenth century was the predominating religion of the fourth." Milner says that, "while there was much outward religion, the true doctrine of justification was scarcely seen." All of this Dr. Duffield does not hesitate to affirm was the genuine offspring of the allegorical system and platonic philosophy of Origen, who made the church on earth the mystic kingdom of heaven. 'Vigilantius," says Elliot, "remained true, and was the Protestant of his times;" but Jerome, remarks Dr. Cumming, "became utterly corrupted," and Augustine, as Elliott has shown, scarcely escaped the universal contagion. Eusebius said, "The church of the fourth century looked like the very image of the kingdom of Christ," but it was not the Millennium, as he dreamed, says Cumming, but the mystery of iniquity, ripening and maturing. It rapidly approached its predicted maturity, and Antichrist loomed into view.-Voice of the Church.

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ISLAMISM AND ROMANISM.

ONE can scarce fail to be struck with the great appropriateness of the symbols made use of in the book of the Apocalypse to represent the two leading superstitions of the modern world-Islamism and Romanism. The one is symbolized by "a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace;" the other by a wild beast which rises out of the abyss, bearing on its form the unmistakable characters of ferocity and cruelty. In all their essential elements these two superstitions are alike, and hence a common origin is assigned them. Both ascend out of the abyss. Very much alike, too, as might have been inferred from the symbols by which they are foreshadowed, has been their action on the world. Both have operated injuriously; but each has operated after its own way. A smoke, especially if charged with mephitic or pestilential particles, will work as fearful havoc as the sword of war or the beast of prey; but its operation is more slow and gradual. The wild beast surprises his victim with a spring, and with overmastering violence rends him in pieces. With the indications of the inspired symbols agree most thoroughly the whole history of Islamism and Romanism: The former has been no such ferocious persecutor as the latter. It may have been as destructive within its own territory, but not nearly so much so beyond it. "The sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." There ensued a thorough obfuscation of both the political and spiritual heavens. The faculties of men were benumbed and stupified. The great lights of religion, of science, of government, were barely visible through the thick haze; and at last they went out altogether, overwhelming the East in unnatural and portentous night. The green rust of ruin began to cover all things. And now, what, at this day, is the condition of this region of the world? The blighted earth, the mouldering cities, the livid face of man, bespeak a region long shut out from the wholesome air and light, and long exposed to the mephitic influence of "the smoke from the pit." It has been otherwise with Romanism, as its symbol indicated it should be. It burst upon the world like a wild beast, and its progress may be tracked by its ravages. In all periods of its existence it has been animated by an intensely bitter and bloodthirsty malignity, if we except a few brief intervals of dormancy, during which it has retired, like the gorged wolf, to its lair.-Hugh Miller.

PAUL AT SEA.

1. He did not go for pleasure, or for his health, or to make money. He went because he was sent. He appealed from an unjust condemnation to Cæsar, and was sent a prisoner ocean-wise to Rome.

2. Heathenism paid his expenses. It is not often that a godly preacher gets transferred from one part of the field to another and a pagan treasury foots the bill.

3. Satan did himself a bad job by driving Paul into this voyage. He had a hand in it. He blew the bellows by which the first fires of persecution raged and drove Paul from Palestine. But this, so far from stopping the preacher's voice as Satan designed, only gave him a new and nobler field. Instead of blowing the gospel trumpet in the outskirts, he now went to blow it in the capital. And Satan's friends carried him for nothing.

4. Paul did good service at sea. He did not coil himself up in his berth and snooze away the voyage. Nor did he, as one in bonds, go fretting in discontent at his lot, setting everybody else a-grumbling. He was cheerful and full of animation, as a good man ought to be anywhere. He was handy as Jack himself when the sea called for him. Now he helps pitch the cargo of the labouring vessel into the sea, and now he makes all ring fore and aft with a voice that roused and encouraged the dispirited sailor, and now gives the captain a hint that saved the lives of all on board.

5. Paul took his religion with him to sea. Some leave theirs behind, and it is not heard of off soundings. But our voyager was not ashamed to have all know who was the God he served, giving thanks for the food provided, and praying for the welfare of all on board.

6. Paul had a taste of a shipwreck, but he went through its perils like a man of sense and a Christian man, and did more for the safety of all his shipmates than any and all others on board.

Paul on the land, or Paul on the sea, is a most noble specimen of a Christian man. Happy for land and sea when, upon both, the number of such men shall have been multiplied ten thousandfold.—Puritan Recorder.

one.

THE ELEMENT OF COLOUR.

In the one department, for instance,-that of the beautiful,-the element of colour, though there are writers who deny the fact, forms a very important The common sense of mankind as certainly testifies that there is beauty in colour as that there is beauty in sound; and it no more militates against the existence of the one element that there are men who, though they see clearly, are affected by colour-blindness, than it does against the other element that there are men who, though they hear distinctly, have, in common language, "no ear," i. e. are musically deaf. Colour is an element of the beautiful; nay, its harmonies possess a curiously-constructed gamut, the integrity of which, unlike that of the musical one, can be scientifically demonstrated. Newton stated, among his many other hard sayings, that "light had sides," and for an age or two the philosophers failed to understand him. But he is understood now. Light is found to have both its sides and poles, and that, by turning it round, it may be untwisted, just as a cord may be untwisted by a similar process, and thus not only its general components seen, but also the particular strands ascertained that nature invariably twists together. And from the comparatively new ability of polarizing light has our knowledge of those invariable strands, or what are known as the complementary colours, arisen. We turn round the polarizing instrument, a Nicol-prism, attached to our microscope, mayhap,- and see the crystal beneath changing colour from purple to yellow, or from red to green, or from blue to orange, always in a determinate order, shade always answering to shade, and each two complements merging where they unite,