loftiest verities with the most trivial circumstances, he proceeds to hold them up before his listeners as models of those very traits and virtues he had ever sought to inculcate. Their seeming guilelessness, their gentle and unassuming bearing, their pliant temper, their trustful dependence, docility, cheerfulness, and animation, their earnest, affectionate, and believing nature, these and other like graces which cluster in the unfolding character of childhood, like buds of promise, (too often, alas! blighted ere the flowering,) -he would have them regard as a living exemplification of the feelings proper to the new-born soul, the child of God when first ushered into the life of holiness. So that it is as if he were offering to them a visible type, the truest a fallen world might furnish, of the qualifications requisite for admission among his followers, as well as an unequivocal display of natural tenderness, when, after gathering the little innocents around him, with one of them pressed to his bosom, he adds the sufficient explanation, "For of such is the kingdom of heaven."

It was an instance of the teacher blended with the actor, and the one becoming the interpreter of the other. It was a sermon, not simply delivered, but enacted, as when, on another occasion, he "called a little child to him and set him in the midst, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven!" And how simple and truthful the lesson! It appeals to universal experience. We were all children once. Religion simply consists in being children still. It is making God our Father. It is laying our poor childish reason at his feet and letting his will be our law. For, after all the dignity with which we are fain to invest the trifles of our adult experience, are we not but children? Do we not think as children, and speak as children, and understand as children? And in this great world, which is our Father's house, do we not play and fret and have our little airs and humours, our petty politics and philosophies, just like children? But what do we know as yet of real life?-of those worlds on worlds around us, and those ages upon ages before us, wherein we are to assume the manhood of our powers when we have "put away childish things"? Yes! at the feet of the Infinite God the oldest of us is but a child. And He treats us as children. Sometimes He caresses us and reasons with us; never does he repel us; but when we come to Him with improper requests He denies them; and when we grow wayward and stubborn He resorts to the rod. He takes away our toys; he thwarts our little plans; he deprives us of anticipated pleasures. And, if we still refuse to acknowledge our sin and submit to Him, he adds to the punishment, until, in brokenness of spirit, we are brought sobbing penitents to his feet. And then He puts his hand upon us and forgives us; and we are happier in his restored confidence, because we know him to be faithful and true. Oh, we

should indeed be orphans in the universe, could we not say, "Our Father who art in heaven." Proud, presumptuous man, go to that blithe and innocent little creature of smiles and tears, who-amid joys and griefs, praise and blame, as great in its mimic sphere as the weightiest concerns of your anxious manhood-so confidingly clings to you for council and support, and learn more of what you are, and more too of what you should become. In every thing else be a philosopher if you will, but in religion be a child.

There is one other lesson in the incident, if possible, still more touching and beautiful. We may understand our Saviour as here intimating his desire that the children and youth brought by their parents for his blessing should themselves possess those spiritual traits of which they already possessed the natural counterpart and harbinger. He would have them become actual specimens as well as symbols of that regenerate character which belongs to the true disciple, and thus lovingly conjoin in their own person the type with the reality it prefigured. Those fair buds of nature he would see maturing into the fairer flowers of grace. That confiding surrender of themselves to the direction of an earthly parent, which is now both the instinct and the necessity of their being, he would see vanishing before the experience of adult years, only to be exchanged for a similar surrender of themselves to the keeping of a faithful Creator. He would make them children by grace as well as by nature. And may there not have been in his words an implied-even if unperceived-intimation of their peculiar fitness for such a vocation? Children may be conceived of as already in the attitude of approach to his arms. Notwithstanding the original taint of sinfulness in their natures, they are to be presumed to be in a more favourable condition for the reception of religious impressions than they will ever be again at any subsequent period of their lives. It is not compulsion which is needed, as if they could be driven towards him, but gentle direction and guidance. Christ loves little children, and is waiting to take them in his arms and bless them; and they know his smile, and, with the quick instinct of childhood, perceive him to be their friend. They will go to him if simply led aright, if suffered to approach and hindered not. Ah! how painful the thought that we may actually hinder the growth of piety in children and youth! We may even more seriously complicate their relations to the Saviour than did the disciples when they sought to exclude them from his personal presence. By our daily looks and words we may keep them back from that Redeemer who would fold them in his arms and bear them on his bosom as trophies of his grace. Faithless parent, careless Sabbath-school teacher, as the little group gather around you, is there no reproving sense in which Jesus says to you, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven"? C. W. S.

THE BABE AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

BY MRS. SIGOURNEY.

A BABE who, like the opening bud,
Grew fairer day by day,

Made friendship with the loving flowers
Amid his infant play.

And though full many a gorgeous plant
Displayed its colours bright,
Yet with the meek forget-me-not
He took his chief delight.

From mantel-vase or rich bouquet
He culled this favourite gem,
Well pleased its lowly lips to kiss
And gently clasp the stem.

So, when to dreamless rest he sank,-
For he was soon to fade,-
That darling friend, forget-me-not,
In his white shroud was laid.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE; its Hopes, its Fears, and its Close. By THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. From fifth London Edition. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1856.

DR. ARNOLD'S Sermons, in six volumes, two of which are reprinted in this country, are regarded in England as models of their kind. This is the fifth of the original volumes, and contains the ripest fruit of the author's experience. His only parish was his school; and the distinctive value of these sermons is not only to youth, but to that large portion of our clergy engaged, like Dr. Arnold, in teaching.

No sphere of effort is unlawful to a minister of the gospel, except such as that in which his sacred office need be made, in any sense, subordinate. We do not believe this necessity exists in the sphere of education. Yet it is a serious question whether ministers are not more secularized in institutions of learning than education is evangelized.. So far as this is the case, the responsibility is fearful; not in entering upon the great field of

education to harvest it for the kingdom of heaven,—the field is the world, -but in failing so to magnify the holy office as to know there, as everywhere, nothing but Christ and him crucified. We mean this in the sense in which Dr. Arnold was the minister and master in Rugby. In any other sense it is difficult to conceive what, to a minister of the gospel, exclusively and awfully consecrated to the labours of the gospel, can constitute a call to an educational charge.

If the Assembly's wise and noble plans of Christian education should fail to realize their designs, we believe it will be either because they are misconceived, or because of the unfaithfulness of Christ's servants who have undertaken to carry them out. If our schools, through timidity or neglect, are made but nominally Christian,-if religion is installed only in the chair of professorships, or chapel forms, or text-books and words,— we anticipate no great good from the large investments of ministry and money. Such a Christianity would prove a failure in the church itself, as is abundantly witnessed by Antioch and Rome and hundreds of Protestant congregations which, with all the offices and the ordinances, "have a name to live, but are dead." Nor do we understand how the design of Christian schools can be more responsible for such a result than the design of a Christian church.

Dr. Arnold made a broad distinction between Christian instruction and Christian education; and it is the same distinction which may make either a church or a school at one time living, at another time dead.

To teach religion as a science in catechisms, or "evidences," or history, or even in Scripture expositions, is just to degrade it to a level with philosophy. Our youth will regard it in the form in which it is taught them; and so will they treat it. So, for this cause, it is regarded in the schools of Germany, where it has degenerated into a mere subject.

It becomes a serious inquiry, which in this short notice we may not pursue, whether the religious instruction in our schools, as commonly conducted, is likely to tend to any better result. It is a startling inquiry to those who have this office in charge. To say that the duties of the gospel ministry in schools is fulfilled in mere instruction is to affirm that Christianity is not an object and a life, but a subject and a science. True it is, the ministry is instrumental, and "it is the Spirit which giveth life;" but no more true in the school than in the church.

We commend this volume as an illustration, so far as it goes, of the true mission of the gospel in schools.

1. The Teacher.-A minister of the gospel, magnifying this office above every other. Himself, his manner, his rules, his instructions, his life, filled with the Holy Ghost; living, by the power of God, in the education of his charge, a burning and a shining light, as Christ should live in him, the light and the life. In other words, what a minister should be in any charge.

2. The School.-A Christian church, whose primal object is not an ultimate, but an immediate, conversion of the soul, as that soul in its every faculty is educated or developed.

Such was Arnold, and such was Arnold's school, whose fondest name in his letters, and his sermons, and his prayers, was "the church in my house."

"If Rugby cannot be such," he would say to his pupils and his friends,

"let me go.

We need not add that it is to found and sustain such institutions, com

prehending every intellectual culture in the single aim of harvesting it for Christian life, that God's people of all denominations have so liberally given of their money and their prayers.

We hope they will not be disappointed. We believe they will not be. Yet we can think of no position more responsible than of those ministers of Jesus Christ to whom this charge is especially intrusted.

THE THEOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND. An Attempt to exhibit the Doctrines now prevalent in the Orthodox Congregational Churches of New England. By DAVID A. WALLACE, Boston. With an Introduction by DANIEL DANA, D.D. Published by Crocker and Brewster, Boston; pp. 106.

This small volume contains reliable information of much interest to those, who desire to learn the present condition of "the orthodox Congregational churches of New England." The author has not given his own views merely, but has collected together the views of different persons of high standing in New England on many important doctrines, for the purpose of showing how far the prevailing New England theology of the present day corresponds with the theology of the Puritans. In this comparison the Unitarians are omitted, and the examination is confined to the churches usually styled "orthodox." No one can read the book without perceiving that if we make their Puritan ancestors the standard of orthodoxy there has been a sad defection from orthodox Christianity in that highly-favoured section of our country. Dr. Dana, in his valuable introduction, endorses and sustains the author in the correctness of his statements; and the opportunities of Dr. D. for knowing the religious condition of New England have been equal to those of almost any one whose name could be mentioned.

The topics concerning which this comparison is particularly instituted are the inspiration of the Scriptures, election, Adam's relation to his posterity, sin and depravity, human inability, Christ's satisfaction, regeneration, conversion, effectual calling, and justification. These are vital points; and every serious departure, with regard to them, from the faith once delivered to the saints, is a just cause for anxiety and alarm. We sympathize with our brethren in New England who are endeavouring to maintain the precious doctrines of their venerated ancestors against existing errors; and we sincerely hope that their efforts to restore the churches to their former glory may not be in vain. In our judgment there never was a time when those brethren have needed so much as now the co-operation of the Presbyterian church, or when our body has been so strongly called as at present to send some of our ablest ministers from other States to strengthen the hands of those worthy sons of New England. Hundreds of the people there, we have reason to believe, would hail such a mission with delight and gratitude.

"CHARGES AND DEFENCE in the Trial of Rev. SIMEON BROWN, for Unsoundness in Doctrine; had before the Presbytery of Miami."

This is a large pamphlet, "published by members of the Lebanon Presbyterian Church and Congregation," to whom Mr. Brown has been ministering. As an expression of personal attachment to their minister, its publication is doubtless gratifying to him; but if either he or they ex