trained to be good citizens and honest members of society if they be not at the same time indoctrinated in certain religious dogmas diverse as the beliefs of the contending parties. In effect, if not in words, they say that education in itself is an evil; that an ignorant man is better than an educated one,-that the former is nearer to Christianity than the latter;-as if the cultivated feelings and affections, the enlightened understanding, and the disciplined will were hostile, in place of favourable, to the growth of Christianity, of which indeed they form an

Prof. Thorold Rogers, in a speech at Oldham, lately, said that " he could not look with patience upon those who professed the Christian religion, but who, because they could not secure by some petty protective method the special narrow tenets of their own narrow sect, were content to see many millions of innocent creatures, brought into the world in God's likeness, living in ignorance and vice."

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1" Some hold that education without theology is worse than none," and those who hold this opinion can by no means agree what theology should be taught."-(Prof. HUXLEY.) "There was a certain class of minds to whom it seemed natural to reason in this way: education ought to be religious; it is vitiated and becomes a doubtful good, or a positive danger, where it is not so; the religious element in it ought to be true religionthat and no other."-(Life of Principal Cunningham.) "The word dogma, according to its etymology, signifies an opinion, a notion.... If we now inquire into the relation of dogma to Christianity, it is evident that dogma does not form an original part of it, but is derived and secondary. The essence of Christianity consists not in a system of ideas, but in a tendency to the inner life. . . . Dogmas are only that form of the life rooted in God which is constructed by thought and reflection."-(NEANDER: Christian Dogmas.) "The failure to see what is necessary, and what a mere matter of opinion, on the subject of the connection between religion and education, has been the cause of the most bitter controversies and the most fatal mistakes. It has made faith the antagonist to reason, and science the enemy of religion. Things which, from their nature, are but parts of one great, beautiful, and harmonious whole, have been arrayed one against another."-(J. A. LANGFORD.)

2" How dare any man, especially a man calling himself minister of God, stand up in any parliament or place under any pretext or delusion, and for a day or an hour forbid God's light to come into the world, and bid the devil's darkness continue in it one hour more? For all light and science, under all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God; all darkness, nescience is of the enemy of God." (T. CARLYLE.) "Godless education' is an expression which is a great favourite, and much used by some who, I do not doubt, are good and religious men. I never hear it used without thinking how inapplicable the epithet godless' is to education, and how applicable it is to ignorance. It sounds to my ear as harsh and incongruous, as if you spoke of 'godless honesty,' 'godless virtue,' 'godless truth'; and I often wish that those who speak thus would look around them and endeavour to realize the fact-strange it may be, but certain that ignorance, with its inseparable companions, irreligion,

integral part.1 It is owing to the prevalence of these views and opinions that this country has been so long without an adequate system of national education, and that the measure at present in force is of so unsatisfactory a nature.2

But it is not only in opposing all attempts at the establishment of a liberal and efficient system of national education that many professing Christians do injury to the cause of education. They do so likewise in not according to it that place in the formation and building up of the

crime, and poverty, have lived, thriven, grown, and multiplied upon their denunciations of godless education.""-(Speech of Lord Advocate, 1872.) "Virtuous habits and principles are a natural foundation on which to build true religion and Christianity; as the contrary habits and principles tend to prevent their entrance into the heart."

"In a mind formed on virtuous habits and opinions, then true religion and Christianity will naturally arise." "If these habits and principles of conduct are early and carefully instilled, your child is already a Christian in his heart his mind is like ground prepared to receive the good seed of religion, which will spring up fifty or a hundred fold."—(Dr. J. BROWN: Sermons.) "What a happy state must they be in who, when they come to take upon them the government of themselves, have the pleasure to find their understandings replenished with proper knowledge, their passions tractable and obedient to reason, and the whole state of their souls regular and orderly."-(Dr. GASTREL.)

1 "Be assured that you will run into a great practical error in the conduct of your pulpit ministrations if you abstain from urging on the people instanter, and whatever their religious belief and knowledge may be, that they should turn from that which is morally evil to that which is morally well."-(Dr. CHALMERS.) Origen remarks of the early Church, that "if any one would candidly consider the Christians, they could produce him more who had been converted from a life not the worst than from a very wicked course; " for they, he adds, "whose consciences speak favourably in their behalf are disposed to wish that our doctrine concerning the future rewards of goodness may be true, and so are more ready to assent to the Gospel than profligate men."

2" There ought to have been long since a general national education which would have made sure of all being educated in some decent manner, as is the case of Prussia, and some parts of Germany."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "To impart the gift of thinking to those that cannot think, and yet who could in that case think, this, one would imagine, is the first function a government had to set about discharging. Were it not a cruel thing to see, in any province of an empire, the inhabitants living all mutilated in their limbs, each strong man with his right arm lamed? How much crueller to find the strong soul with its eyes still sealed, its eyes extinct, so that it sees not."-(T. CARLYLE: Chartism.) The prospect of obtaining a national unsectarian education, founded on the exclusion of all catechisms or formularies, is, in the present temper of the nation, so fair a one that I think the country may well wait a year for the accomplishment of so great a blessing."-(Earl RUSSELL.)

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Christian character to which it is justly entitled.' They look upon it as at best but calculated to fit and prepare for the right performance of the duties and requirements of this life; and not as in any way fitted to advance the soul's eternal interests, or to promote its growth in grace. In the conversion of a soul, or in the building it up in the faith, they look upon all human effort as worthless, if not actually profane. They believe that nothing can be done.

1"There is a certain piety, high-coloured, loud-toned, severe of aspect, which despises education, and occasionally raises to the dignity of a system the mere weakness of the mind and the unfaithfulness of indolence." (VINET.) "Whilst there is a ready recognition, under general representations of it, of the parent's influence in the determination of the character of his offspring, there is very commonly wanting a distinct and practical belief in that influence where it is truly religious, as operating with any of the regularity which marks the action of a divine law. It is regarded, after all, too much as though it depended on the issue of a lottery what course in life those who have received the wisest and most religious training will take. The best is hoped for them, because the chances are much in their favour, not because there is any fixed order or law on the maintenance or operation of which we may build a confident expectation." (Rev. D. THOMAS.) "The whole tenor of the Scriptures prepares us to demand that theology be invariably conformed to the laws of the mind and the actual economy of the moral and material universe." (ALBERT BARNES.) "The greater part of the follies and vices of mankind, and the misery which they occasion, may generally be referred to the neglect of early education, by which the seeds of good principles are sown, and those rank weeds which spring in the greatest luxuriance in the most vigorous mental soils are eradicated and prevented from diffusing their noxious influence." (Dr. W. L. BROWN.) The irreligion and profligacy of children are, for the most part, to be traced to the foolish indulgence of parents, or to the want of due attention to the religious education of their offspring."-(Dr. T. BROWN: Sermons.)

2 "The well-doing and well-being of children are by... words oftrepeated, of promise and command, declared to have a settled dependence upon the instruction and character of their parents." (Rev. D. THOMAS.) "Would parents but begin by times, and labour to affect the hearts of their children with the great matters of everlasting life, and to acquaint them with the substance of the doctrines of Christ what happy,

well ordered Christian Churches might we have!"-(Introduction to Confession of Faith.) "The training of the children of a household in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, . . . when it is done, effectually involves that change in the tendencies of their moral nature which is the essence of true conversion."-(Rev. D. THOMAS.)

3 "The mischief of this false religion is nowhere so evident as in the education of children. It is frequently remarked in the present day how often the children of religious people turn out ill. And what can be expected, when moral training is withheld, and moral power denied, under the pernicious notion that they can be of no use till God's time shall come to shed some extraordinary effusion of divine light within the heart, which shall overpower the vicious affections, and constrain the finite will by

in the way of the spiritual edification of a child till what they term "God's time" comes to give it a new heart; nay, they sometimes even repress the natural feeling of satisfaction the child may experience in doing right as tending in their opinion to engender a spirit of selfrighteousness. They consider that they are growing up to be converted, and that for this end it is of little or no moment what their previous life may have been.2 Thus, instead of training up their children in purity and holiness from their earliest years, they are allowed to grow up

sovereign grace."-(Rev. R. A. THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) The Author of Parental Care for the Salvation of Children declares his abhorence of "the wicked and cruel conduct of those parents who excuse neglect of their children by the futile plea that God only can give converting grace." "The usual cry of negligent parents is, 'We cannot give them grace.' No! but you can take them to the means of grace— you can be master of your own house-you can pray for your children, and with them; you can set a holy example before them, and thus recommend religion in all you do."-(Rev. E. RUSSELL.)

1 66 Simply to tell a child as he just begins to make acquaintance with words that he must have a new heart before he can be good is to inflict a double discouragement. In the first place, he cannot comprehend what this phraseology means; and secondly, if he must have a new heart before he can be good, why should he attempt what must be worthless till something previous befalls him? Nay, are not sometimes even the natural feelings that spring from the consciousness of doing right repressed, as tending to engender a spirit of self-righteousness." -(Dr. BUSHNELL) One of the characters introduced by Mr. Binney, in his Best of Both Worlds, is made to say, "I found that I was born so utterly bad that I could do nothing for myself; and my father and mother most sincerely believed that they could do nothing for me either. I got the idea that I must first be even worse than I was before I could be better; but that after I had grown up and been very sinful, I migh pass, as by a miracle, from darkness to light, and from the Devil to God.' If I was to be saved-for the only notion I received of religion was that it was something to save people from hereafter going to hell—if I was to be saved I thought I should be converted, and that then this conversion would change me in a moment, and that done, I should be secure for ever. It seemed to be of no consequence how much or how little guilt I might actually have contracted, for I thought it could all be expunged in an instant, leaving me as pure and peaceful as an angel-if not indeed rather more so."

"In religious families we find, with painful surprise, either spoilt children, and spoilt with less scruple than elsewhere, in the expectation of their conversion, or else mortified creatures, without spirit or generosity, that will not be capable of a second nature, never having had a first."(ALEX. VINET.) "Their practically accepted notion of Christian nurture, in which they mean to be piously faithful, is that they are to bring up their children outside of all possible acceptance with God, till such time as their conversion may be looked for in a Church-wise form."-(Dr.

pretty much as they please, in obstinacy, disobedience, and vice, till what they regard as "God's time" comes to give them a new heart.1 But God's time is ever the most suitable time, the most natural time, the time when most elements combine to bring about the desired result. What time, then, can be more suitable, more natural for the conversion of children-for rooting out the evil tendencies of their nature, and turning them from sin to holiness-than the season of infancy and childhood, when their natures are plastic and their faculties most pliant for good ?2 Can

BUSHNELL.) "No matter if you are cold to them at times, and do not always live Christ in the house; they are growing up to be converted, and almost anything is good enough for conversion."-(Ditto.) "Don't fall into the error of supposing that it will be all the same at last, whatever sins a man may have committed, if he only comes to be pardoned by God, and to have the guilt of them washed away. It will not be all the same: certainly not in this world, nor possibly in the next either."—(Rev. T. BINNEY.)

1 The Christian parent "is not required to bring up his children expecting that they will choose the ways of sin, and that after they have trodden them for a period long or short, they will, through God's grace following upon his prayer and action, turn to the paths of righteousness." (Rev. D. THOMAS.) "When the young are thus indoctrinated with the utter depravity of human nature, and the co-ordinate truth of their redemption from spiritual ruin is forgotten, how can they be expected to aim at spiritual progress, or to strive for their moral perfection ? This is a demoralisation of the rising generation through the perversion of religious truth.”—(Rev. R. A. THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) "Who, then, has told you that a child cannot have the new heart of which you speak ? Whence do you learn that if you live the life of Christ, before him and with him, the law of the spirit of life may not be such as to include and quicken him also ?"-(Dr. BUSHNELL: Christian Nurture.)

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2 "Children in their young and tender years are like wax, yielding and pliable to whatsoever form we will put them into: but if we miss this opportunity it will be no easy matter to recover them to good afterwards, when they are debauched by evil principles, confident of their own opinions, headstrong by the uncontrolled use of liberty, and hardened by the custom of sinning." (Holy Living.) Humanly speaking, we may fairly expect that our children will become what we try to make them; that the form of their manhood will be according to the mould of their childhood. It is true that without the renewing and sanctifying agency of the Holy Spirit, the wisest teaching of the devoutest parent cannot produce spiritual life. . . . But then, again, He who always works by means, and who has promised His blessing to pious training, will give His Holy Spirit to sanctify our holy instruction and example, and to make our children His children, so that, like Samuel, and Obadiah, and Timothy, they may know Him from childhood, be His from their earliest infancy, begin their moral life as His.”—(Rev. HENRY ALLON.) "Youth is certainly the best season for all manner of learning and instruction, and the most proper seed time of religion. Whatever grows up first in our minds will, with

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