God the Spirit moves the heart through the medium of the intellect. The soul is regenerated by means of knowledge, and human instrumentality is, directly or indirectly, employed in communicating that knowledge. "How shall they hear without a preacher?" Now, as no refined and benevolent parent could bear the thought of having even one of his offspring brought up in ignorance, rudeness, and crime, we may rest assured that the "Father of mercies" is not less concerned respecting all his children, and therefore he wishes each individual son and daughter to be thoroughly and extensively educated.

We are told also, that "he is no respecter of persons." The rich and the poor meet together the Lord is the maker of them all." Earthly parents are sometimes so unnatural as to frown on a poor and unfortunate child, and to bestow especial marks of favour on the one who is rich and prosperous: but not so our "Father who is in heaven." His "tender mercies are over all his creatures." "A sparrow cannot fall to the ground" unnoticed by him; and the very "hairs of our head are all numbered." It must therefore be very offensive to him to have any of his children left to perish in ig

norance.

We know it is not unusual to refer these matters to an over-ruling providence, or some secret decree. But if the decree is secret, it is rash for us to profess to be acquainted with it; and to talk of providence providing that the majority of the human family should be ignorant and wicked, is to oppose the plainest intimations of revelation, as well as to show that we do not yet understand what providence means. The fact is, God has made the human soul to be educated; he has provided all the resources necessary for its education; he has devolved on the church the solemn duty of carrying his designs into effect, and has promised his spirit and blessing to render these efforts effectual; but the work has been neglected; and not a few, instead of confessing their sin in refusing to listen to the "cry of their brother," wish to throw all the blame on predestination. But this cannot be allowed any longer. We must blame ourselves, and ourselves alone, for the ignorance of our country, and of the world. For it could be shown that, at the present, we, as a nation, are wasting on mere luxuries more than enough to provide the whole world with the means of education. Some people say they cannot reconcile the present intellectual and moral state of mankind with the goodness of God; and they refer the matter to the mysteries of providence! These remarks remind one of à case, in which a nobleman, on leaving his mansion for a while, commits it to the care of a number of servants; they are to keep everything in repair,-to have the garden, the walks, the fields, all duly attended to;

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and that nothing may be wanting, he places at their disposal all necessary resources, and allows them to draw on his bank to any amount. But as soon as he is gone they give themselves up to indolence; they live at his expense in luxury and idleness, and leave everything to go to ruin and decay. At length, perhaps, aroused to a little reflection, they open their eyes on the wilderness with which they are surrounded, and begin to wonder at the desolation which is everywhere presented. One of them says, it is a mystery how things could get so bad and another says, he is utterly at a loss to reconcile it with the wealth and the taste of their master! Some of them, perhaps, for they are foolish enough for anything, declare that nothing but a miracle can remove the evil, and propose incessant prayer-meetings as a remedy! Would it not tax our patience to listen to the folly and wickedness of these idle triflers? And if we spoke out, should we not exclaim, "Ye are idle, ye are idle !" "Your Lord has fed and clothed you, and placed his wealth at your disposal, and committed the mansion and the fields to your care, that you might keep everything in order; but you spend his money on your own luxuries, and pass your time in ease and slumber, and then wonder at the neglect of your master, and call this state of things a mystery! Wonder at your own want of fidelity, at your own ingratitude and dishonesty, and behold in the ruin around no mystery except the mystery of your own wickedness!"

The case supposed is no exaggeration of what we are almost daily doomed to hear, not only in common conversation, but even from the pulpit and the press. How often are we told that the ignorance of the poor is the will of God. A highly pious and polished lady, the other day, offered to prove to me from Scripture, that the poor ought not to be educated, and she quoted Deut. xv. 11"The poor shall never cease out of the land." It seemed not at all to have occurred to her that "poverty” and “ignorance" are not words of the same meaning; that there ought to be no necessary connection between them; that many who are very poor are far from being ignorant; and that God had made the most ample provision and given the most solemn command that every Israelite should be educated. Poor he might be, but if prophets, priests, and parents had done their duty, he must have been instructed in the works and will of God; the civil, political, and religious history of his own country, and the relations it bore to other nations. Many of the Jews, doubtless, became poor, but if they received the education which God commanded, their minds were in a highly cultivated state.

It is, then, the will of our "heavenly Father" that none of these little ones should

perish "for lack of knowledge," and therefore he expects that we shall endeavour to cultivate every single human mind. We have seen that all the powers of the soul depend as much upon tuition for their healthy exercise as the body depends upon food. Knowledge is the only proper aliment of our intellectual and moral nature, and where this is denied, the soul is either starved or poisoned. We know also that God has not given to us any superfluous powers or faculties. As he has not furnished the body with too many organs or members, so he has not granted to the soul any superfluous natural endowments; and therefore, he intended that the whole mind should be educated and matured. Nor was it his intention that this should be the favoured lot of a few; he has solemnly commanded that it should be the inheritance of every human being. It is not merely in higher life that ignorance is a curse; it is still more baneful in the lower ranks of society. The magistrate, the judge, the poor-law and factory commissioners, the clergy, and the senate, attribute the crime and iniquity that abound to ignorance. Indeed, you cannot point out a defect in the clown or the pauper, but they all agree in imputing it to the want of better training. Ignorance is said to fill the pot-house, the poorhouse, the gaol, and not unfrequently the hospital. What an acknowledgment is this, that every human being ought to be duly instructed. It is a demonstration that God will not work without us. We might pray until the day of doom for the enlightenment of mankind, but unless we associated suitable exertion with prayer, the last trumpet would find the world as rude and depraved as it is now. To leave only one of the human family without proper training is to commit a great crime against God and against society. It would be difficult to find a single individual of our race in a perfectly isolated condition; and, as igno- | rance and vice are not less prolific than knowledge and virtue, every victim of educational neglect must be an intellectual and moral scourge to the sphere in which he moves. We must not say, that because the man is a peasant or an operative, because the woman is to hoe turnips and weed corn, therefore little tuition is needed. We must remember that these cultivators of the soil and spinners of yarn have souls of the same natural fabric, powers, and dimensions as the prince and the philosopher; that these souls must think and feel and act; and by the necessary law of their being, if not directed aright, must become the concocters of vice and iniquity. It should not be forgotten that every soul has a sphere to move in, which it must either bless or curse. The moon can either cheer our night or eclipse our day. The same land that smiles with

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corn may produce henbane, and pour forth mephitic vapours, or, if not cultivated, will be likely to produce weeds. Besides, the masses are the base of the social pyramid, and he must be a novice in civil economy who can dream that the superstructure will be firm and secure when the foundation is rotten. "Wisdom and knowledge," says the philosophic prophet, "shall be the stability of thy times." The history of the world is strewed with little else than the ruins of empires. Kingdoms towering to heaven have passed away like a dream, and it would require no deep research to find that ignorance and vice were the cause of their decay. Proud Babel is no more; philosophic Greece has fallen; the empire of the Cæsars is gone; the victorious Saracens and Ottomans are sunk into insignificance; and almost every dynasty in the world. at this very moment, is tottering; and the reason is obvious, the masses, by whose power alone every empire must rise or fall, have been neglected. All the churches of Christendom are more or less in an unhealthy state, many of them utter the most grievous wailings respecting their "danger," and yet seem not to know the cause. But can real religion exist apart from knowledge? Christianity is the divinest of all sciences, but to be understood it must be taught. It is to be the religion of every human being; and is beautifully adapted to enlighten every intellect, to purify every heart, and regulate every action, and thus perfect every character; but it cannot do this without being understood; its whole force is moral and not physical. God, who made the soul, is the author of the Bible; and there is, consequently, such a congeniality between mind and divine truth, that intimacy must secure union and blessedness. It is an awful fact, that we have never as yet given the masses the means of conversion. We have not nursed infant man for Christ. We revile infidels, forgetting that we have not given them that knowledge without which faith would be a fiction; and that therefore no small portion of the responsibility of their condition rests on us. Churches or states built on ignorance, and supported by blind devotees, must always be insecure. Commercial, civil, and domestic relations, cemented without knowledge, in the very nature of things are destitute of the elements of union. Without science, agriculturists and manufacturers will be perpetually making the most fatal mistakes, or have the mortification of seeing the best intentioned schemes thwarted and defeated by the ignorance of those whom they employ. The mind, in an uneducated state, is often too blind to distinguish between friend and foe, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred spurns its benefactors, and yields itself most implicitly to those who hurry it onward to ruin. Until the

masses are thoroughly, intellectually, scien- | tifically, and religiously trained, everything must be in an unsettled and precarious condition.

9. In this work of educating the world God intended that women should have a

very large portion of attention. She was created to be the mother, the helpmeet, the companion, the associate of man. Every effort to render her a mere cipher has proved her importance and her worth. She is not merely the mother, but, during the most important period of our existence, the guide of our youth. Wherever she is ignorant and depraved, man never arrives at his proper dignity. This is awfully evident in savage and uncivilized countries; and in our own land, also, myriads of evils have arisen from inattention to the due cultivation of the female mind. The station of woman among us is highly responsible, and yet little care has been taken to fit her for the high rank to which she is raised. We have literally put a sceptre into her hand; for we allow her influence in society to be paramount, but, at the same time, smile at the supposed mental weakness of the being we have thus exalted. Within the last few years more has been done than in any former period to awaken attention to the intellectual culture of the other sex, and yet it is not unusual to find sensible and thoughtful men speak in a disparaging and almost supercilious manner of the weakness and infirmity of the female mind. Highly as woman is said to be esteemed among us, still she has not as yet been duly appreciated, nor has she been prepared by the proper cultivation of her faculties to fill that exalted sphere which she was created to occupy and bless.

In a

If either of the sexes ought to have superior training, that privilege should be especially ceded to woman. If you have ignorant women, you must have a large mass of foolish and depraved men; but on the contrary, make the female portion of any nation intellectual, and the other sex must also be mentally improved. In the character of companions, friends, sisters, wives, mothers, nursemaids, nurses, and domestic servants, there is a sphere of usefulness assigned to woman which angels might envy. majority of cases the minds of youth of both sexes are formed by females. Girls are generally educated by their own sex, and boys, in most instances, have their characters stamped before they leave the guardianship of mothers and governesses. And this is not more the case in the higher ranks of life than in the other orders of society. Indeed, among the peasantry and operatives, in not a few instances, the only teacher that the boy or girl has had has been the mother, or some other female attendant. Perhaps there has been no school at hand, or the parents have been too poor to pay for tuition, |

or the children may have been hurried away to the fields or the factory at an early age; and therefore anything but home education has been out of the question. In such circumstances an intelligent mother might have done wonders. In fact, if we properly weighed the subject, we should be forced to the conclusion that without such invaluable characters education can never be carried on. In a well regulated community, mothers could never be spared from home. No economy can be worse than that which, for a paltry eightpence or tenpence a day, robs a young family of its natural guardian and guide. Were the wages as many pounds as pence, still the pecuniary gain would be a mental and moral loss, for which all the gold in the universe would be but a poor compensation. Mothers make, or allow others to make, the characters of their children. We are told by the highest authority, that "A child left (to himself) bringeth his mother to shame." Our translators have supplied the words in the brackets; the Hebrew may be read "A neglected child is a disgrace to his mother." The former part of the verse proves that the reference is to mental or educational desertion. We cannot look on the being who abandons her offspring as anything less than a monster; we should deem it a profanation of language to call her a woman or a mother; and, if the desertion of the body be so base and unnatural, what shall we say of the abandonment of the immortal soul? It is to the want of proper maternal superintendence that we owe our crowded gaols, our overflowing unions, and our pestilential houses of ill fame. 66 'What," said one to Napoleon, "What does France require to make her a great nation?" Mothers," was the reply. This is all that any nation requires to render it truly great and happy.

It may be said that the women of our day have neither time nor mental capacity to train their offspring. What a confession is this! Not time? A Christian nation, Christian landowners and manufacturers, confessedly the richest in the world, not allow time to mothers to nurse and train their children? Alas! we fear that in many instances the admission is correct; but if so, the fact is one of the foulest blots in our history. It intimates that those who derive their thousands annually from the soil, and who owe all their wealth to the labourers who cultivate the ground, are too avaricious to allow the peasant sufficient wages to enable him to train his family; and therefore mothers must be torn from their children and their homes to earn a few pence per day to buy themselves bread! This is dooming mothers to be unnatural, children to be orphans, and ignorant and depraved; and all for the base love of pelf. What are fields or manufactories worth, if the labourer

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their characters to a great extent formed by their mothers. No one is so fitted to rule and direct the infant mind as woman. Her empire is the heart; her force is persuasion, "in her tongue is the law of kindness ;" and when she is so trained that "she can open her mouth with wisdom," "her children shall arise, and call her blessed," and from the pure fountain of domestic tuition and virtue shall be poured forth a race of Samuels, Timothys, Lydias, and Marys to minister to the salvation of our dark world.

It could be shown that all female depravity springs from ignorance. In a report of the Metropolitan police, published in 1839, it was stated, that of seven hundred and ten females who had been apprehended, "four hundred and forty-one could neither read nor write, two hundred and forty-five could read only, or read and write imperfectly, only twenty-two could read and write well, and but one had received superior instruction." And if education means, as we have endeavoured to show, not the mere art of reading and writing, but the due cultivation of all the powers of the soul, we have no doubt it would be found, that not one of these unhappy beings had been subjected to rational and Christian tuition. In nearly all the reports of schools, which I shall have presently to produce, it will be seen that the boys far out-number the girls, and that the former receive a far more extensive education than the latter. Talk of caste in India! Our own schools are branded with male and female castes; and thus society is poisoned at the fountain-head. The minds of women are as active as those of men; and if we exclude them from the real world of knowledge, they will luxuriate in the world of fiction and folly. The imagination must work, and if not made the temple of truth and religion, will become "the cage of every unclean bird, the hold of every foul spirit, and the habitation of devils." Mary Magdalene was a woman, but this did not exempt her from the malignant influence of the prince of darkness. was from her that our Lord "cast out seven devils." Herodias was as much a woman by nature as the virgin mother of our Lord. The infant savage is born with as fine an intellect and as fine feelings as the offspring of our queen. The rudest, most ignorant, most unfeeling, and most abandoned female in the land was once an innocent babe, with as delicate susceptibilities as the purest, and holiest, and loveliest matron in the land. The difference has been caused by education. The one has been trained to be a monster, and the other to be a saint and a seraph.

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Women not fit to educate their children! What is there then so mysterious in the tuition of the young, that such uncommon geniuses should be required to train the

infant mind? We might ask if there is any thing in the whole circle of science, literature, or religion beyond the grasp of female intellect? All knowledge, to be knowledge to us, must be elaborated in the human mind; and what has been conceived and moulded in one mind can be understood by another. Mind was intended by our Creator to be the mirror of truth. It can become the bright reflector of the material and spiritual world, and every heart is capable of being lighted up with this spiritual illumination. We may not have ascended to the same scientific eminence as others; we may have our minds darkened by ignorance, superstition, and bigotry; our senses may not have "been exercised to discern both good and evil;" and therefore, thoughts which are clear to others may be obscure to us: but then the defect is in the training, and not in the mind. The Pisgah of knowledge may be ascended by all; and though some may climb faster than others, yet it is probable that rather from discouragement than from any other cause, numbers never make any effort to reach its summit.

With so many illustrious names that adorn the pages of female biography before us, we must not despise the mind of woman. History teaches what revelation asserts, that God has "fashioned all hearts alike," and therefore all have the same essential attributes. We shall, perhaps, by and by discover that in natural mental power, as in Christianity, there is neither "male nor female, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free." All that is necessary to be known for her own improvement, and for the due education of her children, may be as distinctly understood by the peasant's daughter as by a princess. And we cannot imagine a more suitable and lovely medium through which truth could shine into the mind of an infant, than the heart of a mother. Woman is particularly communicative, and seems never more at home than when pouring the contents of her full bosom into the soul of her offspring; why then, should we by ignorance, or any other cause, deprive her of this pleasure, or rob her children of the inestimable privilege of learning the lessons of wisdom from her lips?

It seems strange that we should talk of mothers being unfit to educate their children, when we have hitherto thought anything would do to take care of infant man. Almost any superannuated old woman has been delegated to look after these heirs of glory; and, not unfrequently, the most ignorant girl in the house has been the nursemaid. Worse tuition than that to which the young of the human species has been subjected it is difficult to imagine. Horses, dogs, hawks, falcons, and parrots have had ten thousand times more natural and rational attention; and therefore to talk of mothers as unfit to