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Faith put forth by Protestant Reformers have been in most countries pushed into unnatural and absurd eminence.

Such events generally impose upon others the disagreeable duty of appearing as depreciators of books once valuable.

Hymn Books have been, to the Protestant Churches, the chief representative of new sacred writings. No Bibliolatry has been paid to them, and none have more effectually promoted spiritual life.

All Sacred Books, however valuable, must be pervaded by the errors of their age, and become unfit for practical use to generations which have unlearned those errors.

EDUCATION.

Education consists in training the Faculties to full self-possession, the Habits to industry and refinement, the Sentiment to rightfulness and warmth.

We may passively receive a stock of knowledge, without having the faculties active and well subordinated.

Men ought not to be called educated when they have merely learned to obey; but much rather, when they have attained Self-guidance.

To use power aright is a great test of sound education. The uneducated either uses it badly, or, as if terrified by its possession, drops it from his grasp.

Leisure is a great power, and to use it aright is also a mark of the educated.

Without some leisure, none but a narrow and accidental cultivation of the mind is possible.

The millions of England have one-seventh part of time as leisure; but they do not employ this for any real or valuable education, chiefly because they are not educated enough to estimate the advantage; partly also, because those who ought to assist it impede it.

Where trades are apt to be ruined and superseded from public causes beyond the control of the laborer, public justice,

as well as expediency, demands that the State busy itself to secure versatile powers of industry in the working classes.

The primary education of the multitude has two principal roots, Industrial Art and Poetical Recitation. Industrial Art furnishes the laborer with the power of physical support, and in its higher forms rises into Science. Poetic Recitation teaches moral sentiment, musical rhythm, refinement, imaginative beauty, pride in nationality, patriotism. It culminates into religion.

In the present condition of trade and complex constitutions, some instruction in politics and political economy is necessary. Religious institutions might be and ought to be the most efficient educators of the Sentiments; but unhappily, a great change must pass over existing churches, before they can regain the lead which they have lost.

Sectarianism hinders all national religion and sound national

education.

Theism is the only cure. When it has once fair play, it will educate nations and unite the world in harmony as yet unimagined.

ASPIRING VIRTUE-THE HERO-SAINT.

Those who abound in leisure, with wealth or knowledge,
Are open to new virtue, and to much new vice.
How to bestow free time, is a problem for each to answer,
According to his means, and capacity and bent;
And therein Selfishness has wide room to lead astray.
Those who have grown strong, are bound to higher tasks,
And, when the Good has become easy, to pursue the Better,
And to find what is their task, and perform it manfully.
High duties require labor, or at least permit not ease ;

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The purer a man's conscience the higher is his thought of Duty. Duty is a taskmaster who prescribes endless work,

And the higher virtue rises, the more she aspires.

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Who shall speak fitly of that virtue, sublime though imperfect,
The virtue of the hero-saint, hidden, yet visible to the open eye,
For the good of others resolute and surrendering its all,
Large-hearted to imagine, vigilant to act, unwearied to perse-
vere?

It is sorrowful, yet always rejoices; humble yet very confiding;
Aware of human ignorance, yet bold to track divine mysteries.
It exists not, save in the deep of soul and patient of thought.
It thrives with man's whole nature-intellect, fancy, con-
science,-

And dwindles with the cramping of genius or narrowing of knowledge.

Therefore its diffusion is for future ages or future worlds,

When mutual love and prudence shall better conspire,

And the lack of one shall be supplied by the riches of many.

ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS

I do not think that it is the mission of this age, or of any other particular age, to lay down a system of education which shall hold good for all ages. The basis of human nature is, perhaps, permanent, but not so the forms under which the spirit of humanity manifests itself. It is sometimes peaceful, sometimes warlike, sometimes religious, sometimes skeptical, aud history is simply the record of its mutations.

"The eternal Pan

Who layeth the world's incessant plan

Halteth never in one shape,

But forever doth escape

Into new forms."

This appears to be the law of things throughout the universe, and it is therefore no proof of fickleness or destructiveness, properly so called, if the implements of human culture change with the times, and the requirements of the present age be found different from those of the preceding. Unless

you are prepared to say that the past world, or some portion of it, has been the final expression of human competency; that the wisdom of man has already reached its climax; that the intellect of to-day possesses feebler powers, or a narrower scope, than the intellect of earlier times-you cannot, with reason, demand an unconditional acceptance of the systems of the past, nor are you justified in divorcing me from the world and times in which I live, and conforming my conversation to the times gone by. Who can blame me if I cherish the belief that the world is still young; that there are great possibilities in store for it; that the Englishman of to-day is made of as good stuff, and has as high and independent a vocation to fulfill, as had the ancient Greek or Roman.

While thankfully accepting what antiquity has to offer, let us never forget that the present century has just as good a right to its forms of thought and methods of culture as any former centuries had to theirs, and that the same sources of power are open to us to-day as were ever open to humanity in any age of the world.

In the earliest religious writings we find man described as a mixture of the earthly and the divine. The existence of the latter implies, in his case, that of the former; and hence the holiest and most self-denying saint must, to a certain extent, protect himself against hunger and cold. But every attempt to restrict man to the dominion of the senses has failed and will continue to fail. He is the repository of forces which push him beyond the world of sense. He has intellect as well as a palate, and the demands of the latter being satisfied, the former inevitably puts in its claim. We cannot quench these desires of the intellect. They are stimulated by the phenomena which surrounds us, as the body is by oxygen; and in the presence of these phenomena we thirst for knowledge as an Arab longs for water when he smells the Nile. The Chaldean shepherds could not rest content with their bread and milk, but found that they had other wants to satisfy. The stars shed their light upon the shepherd and his flock, but in both cases

with different results. The quadruped cropped the green herbage and slept contented; but that power which had already made man the lord of the quadruped was appealed to night after night, and thus the intellectual germ which lay in the nature of these Chaldeans was stimulated and developed. Surely, it might be urged, if man be not made, and stars scattered by guess-work, there is strong reason for assuming that it was intended that mental power should be developed in this way. But if this be granted, it must be admitted that we have the very highest sanction for the prosecution of physical research. Sanction, indeed, is a term too weak to express the inference suggested by a comparison of man's powers with his position upon earth; it points to an imperative command to search and to examine, rather than to a mere toleration of physical inquiry.—John Tyndall.

EXPERIENCE OF THE POEt Tasso.

Whether grave or gay, this spirit often came to him, and he often held long discourses with it. Manso endeavored to persuade him that it was a fancy; but Tasso maintained that it was as real as themselves, a Christian spirit, and which Manso admits gave him great comfort and consolation. Tasso, to convince Manso of the reality of this spirit, begged him to be present at an interview. Manso says that he saw Tasso address himself to some invisible object, listen in return, and then reply to what it appeared to have said. He says that the discourses of Tasso "were so lofty and marvelous, both by the sublimity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of talking, that, exalted above myself into a certain kind of ecstacy, I did not dare to interrupt them." Tasso was disappointed, however, that Manso did not see or hear the spirit—which he ought not to have been after what he himself tells us, that to see spirits the human eye must be purified, or the spirits must array themselves in matter. This is the present acknowledged law in such cases of apparitions. They who see them must be

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