a moral or a religious man who does not feel that the highest object and the chief aim in life should be to labour and strive for the good of others. Such was the life of Him who is given for our example.2 We find a principle in the human heart which naturally corresponds with this, and which has led many to risk and even to sacrifice their lives for the good of others.3 It was this feeling, strong in the Apostle Paul, which brought him to say that for the sake of his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh, he would be willing himself even to be accursed.* It is the opposite of this principle, or selfishness, that is at the root of so much

Those whom we

1 "That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man-that which constitutes human goodness, human greatness, human nobleness is self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantages, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right. The beautiful character is the unselfish character. most love and admire are those to whom the thought of self seems never to occur; who do simply and with no ulterior aim, with no thought whether it will be pleasant to themselves or unpleasant, that which is good, and right, and generous. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone like the bloom of a soiled flower. Nay, there have been those so zealous for some glorious principle as to wish themselves blotted out of the book of heaven if the cause of heaven could succeed.”—(J. A. FROUDE.)

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2 "The voice which commanded man to sacrifice his life was, in fact, only commanding him to renew and perfect that image of God in which he was created; for the spirit of self-sacrifice is the spirit of God himself.”—(J. C. HARE.)

3 "Singular and startling as the command, declaring that we must lose our life in order to save it, appears to the understanding when judging from a first sight and aspect of things, there is an echo in the human heart which welcomes and responds to it. Hardly any form of religion, however debased and unholy, has gained a footing among mankind in which the duty of self-denial, of self-mortification, of self-sacrifice has not been inculcated in one form or other. Under a feeling of this sort, many benighted victims of superstition have mangled and maimed their limbs, as if the body were the self it behoves us to lose; while others have forsaken the world, and immersed themselves in the dreary abstraction of eremical meditations, as if the heart, with its social affections, were the self which we are to lose. They discerned not the nature of the life which they were to lose, and therefore they were unable to find life."-(Rev. J. C. HARE: Sermons.)

4" When Paul said to his countrymen, 'I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,' he was no novice in the school of Christ. Such disinterestedness of religious emotion was the result of long culture.' -(Rev. Dr. H. DARLING.) "A Christian should have such a regard for the glory of God as to be willing to be lost if his glory would be promoted thereby."—(Prof.

of the sin and evil that at present exist in the world.1 Nor can we imagine that God, who is wise and good, would have implanted such principles in our nature, would have made vicarious suffering to so generally pervade humanity,2 were it not that those who labour and suffer cheerfully for others, those who influence others for good, will in the future life meet with their reward.3 Those who strive to work God's work here, who seek to carry out His beneficent purposes towards mankind, cannot fail of their reward. Were these principles to guide and animate our conduct—and we

DUNCAN.) "I think I would give my life, if called to do so, for the cause of Christ and the welfare of men."-(H. W. BEECHER.)

1 "Selfishness is the universal form of human depravity; every sin that can be named is only a modification of it. The great want of fallen humanity is a specific against selfishness, the epidemic disease of our nature. It is the glory of the Gospel that it was calculated and arranged on the principle of restoring to the world the lost spirit of benevolence."- (Rev. JOHN HARRIS: Mammon.) "Jonathan Edwards defines virtue to be 'love of being in general,' by which he means the desire of promoting the happiness of every being in the whole system of being, in such measure as that the greatest degree of happiness on the whole shall be the result; that every being shall be loved in proportion to his importance in the universe, and so far as such love does not prevent the attainment of the greatest possible degree of happiness to the whole."-(HENRY ROGERS: Introductory Essay.)

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2" Men by their follies run themselves into extreme distress; into difficulties which would be actually fatal to them were it not for the interposition and assistance of others. God commands by the law of nature that we afford them this assistance, in many cases where we cannot do it without very great pains and labour and sufferings to ourselves."(BUTLER: Analogy.) Throughout the world we see illustrations of the fact that one man can suffer for another. Vicarious suffering is a law of the household and of society." "What are poor-houses but vicarious sufferings? We stand between men who have transgressed natural laws, and the full penalty of their transgression. What are hospitals but institutional vicariousnesses? Through their instrumentality we interpose between the violation of law and the full penalty of law."-(H. W. BEECHER.)

3" We should know that sufferings produce their final results only after we are disembodied, and stand on the heavenly plain in the glorious fellowship of the redeemed." (H. W. BEECHER.)

"All the pursuits and occupations of men, in so far as they have a tendency to better human life or to improve the condition of the species, are to be classed among the means which Divine Providence is overruling and making use of for the promotion of the final interests of the kingdom of God."-(Manual of Conduct.) 66 The progress of the human race,

resulting from the common labour of all men, ought to be the final object of the exertion of each individual. In promoting this end we are carrying out the will of the great and blessed God."-(Motto to Official Catalogue of Great Exhibition, 1851.)

believe that they will yet guide and animate the conduct of men upon earth-what an unspeakably great impetus would be given to education! what an immense stride would be made in social progress!1

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We would especially protest against any religious doctrine or belief that in any way interferes with or denies the necessity of earnest and unceasing effort in the education of children. It is, in our view, a most dangerous and fatal error to hold that nothing can be done in the way of bringing children to Christ till they have reached years of discretion, and till some spiritual effusion has been poured out upon them.3 When children are believed to be growing up to be converted, the tendency is for parents to neglect the duties that naturally devolve upon them in regard to their moral and religious education. Conversion, they say, is

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1 "Culture pursued under such a feeling would acquire new worth; it would be purified from egotism and unhealthy self-consciousness, would be informed by a more chastened reverential spirit, which would add to it a new excellence."-(Prof. SHAIRP.) "O how unspeakable would be the benefit of education thus managed. A spirit of universal charity and good-will, of sweetness and benignity, of condescension and forbearance, of grace and unity, would quickly revive and spread itself." —(GEORGE MONRO.) "It is the best test, as it is the main glory and chief end of a true civilization-its caring for the great body of the people." -(Dr. JOHN BROWN.)

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"I conceive that, instead of regarding man (i.e., the baptised infant) as a corrupt creature, disposed to evil and averse to all goodness, we are to consider him as a new-born creature, in whom a new principle, the seed of Divine grace, is implanted, to eradicate the evil principle derived from Adam, and to dispose him to goodness and virtue." (Mrs. TRIMMER.) 3" What opinion is more essentially monstrous, in fact, than that which regards the Holy Spirit as having no agency in the immature souls of children, who are growing up helpless and unconscious into the perils of time ? "(Dr. BUSHNELL: Christian Nurture.) Spiritual assistance may be imparted at any time, from the earliest to the latest period of our existence; and whenever it is imparted then is that being born of the spirit to which our Saviour's words refer (John iii.). And considering the subject as a matter of experience, if we cannot ordinarily distinguish the operations of the Spirit from those of our own minds, it seems to follow that neither can we distinguish when they commence. So that spiritual assistance may be imparted, and the thing designated by our Lord's discourse satisfied, without such a sensible conversion that a person can fix his memory upon some great and general change wrought in him at an assignable time."-(Dr. PALEY: Sermons.)

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May not our want of faith be one reason why our children grow up unregenerate ?" "Do we not almost take for granted an unspiritual childhood? Is not our commonest idea of a child's piety connected with a conversion in advanced youth? And where this is the expectation, it

God's work, and God will work His own work when and how and by what means seem right to Him.1 But in grace, no less than in nature, God works by laws and according to an established order, for the discovery and application of which, in the one case as in the other, He has endowed us with reason and surrounded us with means and opportunities.2

will almost necessarily colour our feeling, give a hesitating character to our efforts, and dash our prayer with latent unbelief." "If we fully expected that our children would be consecrated from the womb, and trained them and prayed for them in the strong, glowing, enthusiastic faith of such an expectation, how much more heart, and vigour, and joy there would be in our training, and how much oftener we should see its blessed results."-(Rev. HENRY ALLON.)

1"It hath been my lot a thousand times, when pressing the subject of religious duties upon men, to have in reply, 'You know we can do nothing of ourselves,' which I hold to be tantamount to the Turk's saying he can do nothing to save his ship. The same misuse of God's foreknowledge which enervates or rather annihilates the Turk, produces the same effect upon multitudes amongst ourselves who have a desire after religion, but fancy that they are powerless or incapable of helping themselves till the angel of the Lord move the waters." "But not only among those who are upon the outside of the holy temple of religion, and take no means of entreaty or activity to obtain admission, looking for a door to open by invisible agency, and themselves to be transported at once within the wall-not only among these deluded bystanders, but amongst the religious themselves doth this preponderance of piety over wisdom and action manifest itself. If they were as wise as they are pious, and had studied the means of grace as well as they know the fountain of all grace, they would not feel loath to tell a sinner what steps to take, nor fondness to impress him with the idea of his own insufficiency, nor constantly conclude every discourse of active duty with the saving clause that we can do nothing of ourselves, which method of proceeding doth cut the throat of all thought and action, and impede all progress as much as if the captain of a ship should preach in the hour of need to his seamen how vain it was for them to put forth any endeavour."-(EDWARD IRVING: Sermons.) "Some unreasonably expect that God should do all for them in the business of their salvation, without their own endeavours, upon pretence that we can do nothing ourselves, and therefore it is in vain to go about it. Our part is only to wait God's time of working, and when his Holy Spirit moves, the business will be done without more ado; but in the meantime all our diligence is discharged as impertinent, and even our prayers too, if this doctrine be consistent with itself."-(Holy Living.) "I verily believe, indeed, that Satan never furnished to sinners a more obvious, useful, and unanswerable defence of impenitence than has thus been furnished by the ministry of the Gospel. Tell a man that he cannot repent, or love God, or obey Him, and your work will be done."(ALBERT BARNES.)

2" God worketh in all things according to their nature, and experience telleth us that those prosper best in grace that most faithfully and diligently use the means; and we have no reason to believe that any man

When children are brought up and educated in Christian principles, we are not to expect the truth of God's word to reach the heart in the same way or under the same circumstances as where a people have grown up to maturity in heathenism and ignorance of Christianity.1 In the former case it is, or ought to be, the gradual and crowning result of a course of right training and instruction begun and carried out from the earliest age.2 Nay, we hesitate not to affirm that what is commonly called conversion is the abnormal or non-natural way of coming to God, and is only to be looked for or expected when the natural means have

ever came to actual knowledge, faith, or love without them."-(R. Baxter.) "He who looks for the effect while he is wilfully neglecting the necessary means, manifests not rational and commended confidence, but foolish and unwarranted presumption."-(Dr. WARDLAW.) "God gives us food of our own earning and consolations of our own procuring in all ordinary cases: and they are not the less gifts of God because they come from our own instrumentalities."-(H. W. BEECHER.) "If you decompose into visible elements the power displayed by Christianity, you will only find a human force at the end of your analysis."-(VINET.) "Man carries on his work; God adds his influence; and the two are not in antagonism, but are coincident and co-operative. They are not in conflict, but concurrent."-(H. W. BEECHER.) "Though Providence directs and assists virtuous endeavours, He never, by superseding them, encourages idleness or justifies presumption."-(HANNAH MORE.)

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1"When those who, by the blessing of God, have been trained up in good principles, and by His grace, not only preserved from a loose and debauched life, but engaged also in a holy and virtuous course all along, shall, notwithstanding, have it preached to them and pressed upon them, that they also must be converted and born again, or else they shall never see the Kingdom of God, the tendency is to perplex the consciences and disturb the peace of very good men." "This, indeed, was necessary and proper doctrine from our Saviour to Nicodemus, and to the generality of the Jews, as well as from the Apostles to the Pagan world, who had been nursed up in ignorance, superstition, and idolatry. But it was not preached to John the Baptist, nor to St. John the Apostle, nor to Timothy, who had known the Scriptures from a child. Nor can such doctrine (without equal indiscretion and danger) be preached to several others now who are of that condition that, as our Saviour saith, they need no repentance."-(Holy Living.)

"I doubt not to affirm that a godly education is God's first and ordinary appointed means for the begetting of actual faith and other graces in the children of believers."-(RICHARD BAXTER.) "Family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual."--(JONATHAN EDWARDS.) "According as people are inured to order, and to be in subjection in private families, such will be their behaviour afterwards in Church or State,” for "he that accustoms those that belong to him to obedience at home, makes his house a seminary of good subjects and of good Christians, and will teel the comfort and reap the blessing of both."—(Holy Living.)