lowering, we thus prove our due value for them. Can we forget that our Blessed Saviour loved to see children around Him, and declared that unless we become like unto them, we shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven?

It is feared that holy truths, when combined with exercises in language, will become too familiar to children, and thus lose their value. Vain fears: for these truths have in themselves a sublimity and an indefeasible authority, which are inseparable from them. Mix them as you will, they will always, in the hearts of believers, assert their pre-eminence, and claim the respect which is their due. We readily grant that frequent repetitions will familiarize our pupils with them, but this is the very result at which education should aim. Is it not true that holy truths should pervade the whole man, should guide his footsteps, and ever be his light, his rule, his stay? He ought, therefore, to be familiarized with them from earliest infancy. They should be so entwined with his other thoughts, as for the natural association of ideas to revive them incessantly. Now, throughout the whole range of instruction there is no branch which can combine these moral and religious truths as easily as lessons in the mother-tongue, even while appearing to have quite another object in view. The four different series of which our course of language is composed, may often repeat the same idea, whilst imparting to it each time the charm of novelty, by varying the place and the form of it.

But the supposed unsuitableness of the combination may be insisted upon; and we may be told, "There is great incongruity, and you cannot deny that in syntax, conjugation, and vocabulary, direct instruction has not the supremacy on the contrary, it is subordinate, for throughout it is subjected to their requirements." Here there is a great mistake, which I must point out: our direct instruction does contain a definite doctrine, but this doctrine is in no wise dependent on our exercises in language, which require no such subordination, for they will accommodate themselves indiscriminately to whatever materials we supply. It is

only subordinate with regard to the form or mode of expression, and it gains by being so, as we have already said. The grammars now in use occasionally insert some of those holy truths, which we would give in their entirety in our course of language. And have they been accused of profanation? Yet in them, these truths are to exemplify rules, and not introduced for their own sake, but only to exemplify certain rules, and are, therefore, in an entirely subordinate situation. Not so in our course of language. Divine instruction is its object, and the whole of it tends to the establishment of Christian principle in the mind of youth. To condemn this tendency is to say that lessons in language are to keep aloof of religion and morality, and say, in other words, that the object of these lessons is merely to teach the rules of speech to beings gifted with intelligence (for brute beasts cannot speak), but to beings whose thoughts are not either to rise above the clouds, or sink below the grave; to beings whose interests shall be limited to the confines of earth, and whose consciences shall be dumb.

In order to comply with these requirements, language itself must be mutilated, for those very expressions must be banished, which contain all that is most interesting, most beautiful, and most sublime in speech.

It is not reflection, but blind habit, which denounces the combination that we propose; and I shall therefore answer, in the words of Senaca, "We must beware of following, like the brute beast, in the track of others, instead of selecting the path in which we ought to walk.”

Intellectual Developement.

Our course of language is specially adapted, whether in its separate parts or in their combination, to the developement of the intellectual faculties of childhood. It is calculated to attain this object, and it has done so when duly followed up. But there are persons who dread this result; some on behalf of religion, because they think this developement must undermine faith; some because they fear that the stimulus thus given to the mind will endanger the welfare of youth, and disturb the peace of

families and of society. These are serious imputations, and deserve to be carefully weighed.

What? is it said that intellectual developement must undermine the faith of youth? I cannot conceal my surprise at this unexpected cavil. Shall the Gospel, which is so fitted to captivate every upright mind by its manifest truth, its sublimity, its beauty, and its philanthropy; shall that Gospel, which has awed into silence the schools of paganism, shall that Gospel, I say, shrink from the gaze of youth, when taught to see, to reflect, and to reason? Is its cause, then, so desperate that it can only venture to encounter the stupidity of ignorance? How much more has it to fear from the torpor of mind, of barbarism; for it is not adapted to savages, but to beings who can think and feel like man. And for this reason, its light was not vouchsafed till man had become conscious of other wants besides those of mere earthly existence. It has lost ground wherever a worldly spirit has prevailed, and has vanished from those countries which have relapsed into barbarism. Such is its history; and shall we, indeed, think this Gospel adverse to the intellectual developement of youth?

To invoke the slumber and the darkness of the mind in aid of Christian faith is to act in direct opposition to the most positive declarations of the Gospel. Our Blessed Lord speaks of Himself as the Light of the world, the Light of the soul, as the sun is that of the earth. When explaining to His disciples the cause of the unbelief which He met with in the doctors and elders of the people, He spoke of them as blind leaders of the blind, and imputed this blindness to an evil heart which loves not the light of the truth. Such is the language of our Lord and of His Apostles. And how shall men who call themselves Christians denounce our teaching as prejudicial to faith, because it labours to develope young minds, and prepare them for the light of the Gospel, that they may profit by it? Our Lord Himself had His school; His Disciples were ready to receive His words without any examination, but He disclaimed this servile indolent surrender of themselves. He even strove to awaken their

minds by questions, by parables, by leading them to trace the impress of the Divine mind in the glories of Nature; and He accustomed them to look within for what He sought, to teach them. Then our course of language follows His example, when it labours to develope the faculties of children, and thus prepares them to receive the evangelical truths which it teaches.

The Gospel presents itself to us under two different aspects, as it were. On one hand, there is such simplicity, that we should say it was specially intended for children. God is the Father in heaven; He loves and feeds His children. All men are brothers, and should love their universal Father, and each other. All this may be felt and understood by a little child. But then behold the endless train of grand and sublime ideas which emanate from these simple elements, when rightly apprehended. They stretch forward to the immensity of the Universe, to the infinite grandeur of its Author, to the unfathomable depths of eternity. Then its morality, which is spiritual, without however neglecting what is visible, penetrates into the recesses of the human heart, to search out and regulate those inmost workings which are inaccessible to the eye or the ear of man. Hence St. Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians*.

Now we obey this injunction in our course of language, which labours to develope the dawning intelligence of youth; for the man will never be perfect in wisdom, if the understanding of the child has remained uncultivated. What becomes, then, of the cavil, which accuses us of undermining Christian faith, when we are labouring to pave the way for it, and to prepare our pupils to receive

the benefits which it tenders to mankind?

I will now pass on to the next objection urged against our system, viz., that it will compromise the peace and order of families and society, by inspiring children with pride and pretensions which will be the torment of their own lives and of those around them.

To this I answer; the mother first awakens the mind

* I. Cor. i. 20.

of her child, by enduing his lips with speech; and does she mar the interests of the family or of society by her successful endeavours to instruct and to develope his intellectual faculties? Does the Gospel disturb the peace of individuals, of families, or of nations, by the living light which it sheds upon them; by its appeals to human intelligence, which is thus awakened from its torpor and called into action? And our course of language in cultivating the minds of children, does but follow out the plan of their first teacher, and prepare them to apprehend and to practise the lessons of our blessed Lord. Why then should it be called a disturber of peace and good order?

Why will we ever confound use with abuse, day with night? We are well aware that men, aye, and children too, may abuse the knowledge and capacity they have acquired: but ought we on this account to impede the developement of the faculties? On this principle the earth ought to be laid waste, and men should be stripped and mutilated; for they are ever prone to make a wrong use even of the most holy things. The duty of wisdom is to prevent and correct such abuse, as far as it can, and wherever it is found.

Let us not deceive ourselves; it is not the cultivation of the mind which makes children captious, self-sufficient, insubordinate, or turbulent. The fertile source of these bad qualities lies in the heart, which mental cultivation (if true to its name), far from corrupting, can alone check, or restrain, or eradicate. To develope the faculties without object, order, or method, is not to cultivate the mind. To do this, we must in the first place select suitable subjects, which may call forth all the better feelings which the Creator has implanted in the nature of man; and to this instruction we must add exercises which may tend to apply and impress it permanently on the mind. The combination of these two elements constitutes real mental cultivation.

When we speak of the cultivation of a field, we mean the best mode of making it yield the produce which we desire. For this two things are needful, skilful labour and good seed. This is the type of intellectual culti