remarkable man laid down as the basis of all his efforts. Indeed, he had no defined scheme, plan, or form of procedure, but strove to carry out great principles in such a manner as, under vary. ing circumstances, might prove most efficient. There were principles peculiar to Hofwyl, but no peculiar methods,' is the just remark of an intelligent writer on the subject. De Fellenburg set out with a clear and exalted view of his object: i.e., ' to develope all the faculties of human nature, physical, intellectual, and moral; to endeavour to train and unite them in one harmonious system, which should form the most perfect cha racter of which the individual was susceptible, and thus prepare him for every period, and every sphere of action, to which he should be called.' This view of his object guided him in shaping the means to be employed for attaining it. In the first place he took care to discriminate between instruction and education, between the infusion of knowledge and the training of the human faculties, assigning to the latter the chief place, and keeping the former in just subordination to it. In the second place, in seeking to educate the whole man, he paid due attention to the physical part of his nature, and sought, by all proper means, to promote the health and vigour of the constitution, as subservient to mental energy and moral excellence. In the fifth place, he aimed most sedulously at the culture of the moral faculties-at the formation of a charac ter marked by rectitude, purity, and generous affections, and for this end endeavoured to surround his charge with a moral element favourable to their growth in social virtue. Among his boys, he promoted a sort of public opinion on the side of the true, the chaste, the just, the noble. He began with a few, and inspired them with his own spirit, and then, as others were added, they gradually caught the tone of feeling predominant in the school. The most effectual mode of securing the predominance of good examples in a new institution is to commence with so small a number, that their combined power and skill cannot escape the vigilance of the educator, or resist his moral influence.' Then, the character formed by the educator will materially aid in the formation of other like characters. A public opinion among boys in favour of what is good, and condemnatory of what is evil, must appear to every one of immense importance. In the sixth place, De Fellenburg employed vigilant personal inspection and superintendence to the utmost possible extent, arranging, in some peculiar cases, that a child should have a preceptor or mentor specially devoted to him. In the seventh place, he sought to In the third place he consulted the rule not by coercion-not by the inspicapacities and tendencies of his pupils, ration of fear, but by the power of love. seeking to form them for that destiny Patience, gentleness, condescension, in which the Divine Being, by the powers short the imitation of the Great and given to them, seems to indicate. No Divine Teacher was ever regarded by educator,' he used to say, 'should permit him as the best method of obtainhimself to misapprehend or to perverting a salutary influence. 'The eduaccording to his own contracted views, cator should be like the Saviour, the that which the Creator has thus ordered child's best friend, and not his tyrant.' in infinite wisdom.' His endeavour wasIn all which relates to puerile faults, to elicit and guide whatever faculties mild means are the only efficient Providence had bestowed, not to attempt means.' The parent or guardian must to create what did not exist, nor to des- assume the infantile character, and be troy what the Almighty had implanted. the companion of the sports of the chilIn the fourth place, he sought not the dren.' instantaneous or rapid, but the gradual development of the human mind, laying it down as a maxim that a child should never be employed in exercises beyond his powers. Thus, walking in the shadow of that infinitely perfect example, who said to His pupils, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.' In the eighth place, he crowned all his other efforts by the exertions which he used, in order to imbue his pupils with a religious spirit-with the mind of Christ-with the love of God. The Saviour's example—his mild, benignant, and lovely disposition-was ever illustrated, held up to admiration, recommended, and enforced. These are the main principles which were adopted by this philanthropic man, and carried out with signal success, in numerous instances, at an expense of time, toil, and substance, which, though abundantly recompensed by the results, entitle him to a place amongst the most disinterested of our race. These principles now, happily, are by no means novel; but they were so when first broached by De Fellenburg, forty or fifty years ago. As an original mind in the work of education, he deserves to be remembered with honour; nor are these principles even now sufficiently recognised, studied, understood, and reduced to practice. In the application of some of them we think he erred. There were arrangements in his school to which we should object-the teachings of dogmatic christianity had not the conspicuous place assigned to it, which we think it ought to have, in the concluding portion of an educational course; nor, it is to be feared, had he those clear evangelical views of religious truth, which we deem of primary importance; but still the principles we have just enumerated are of immense value, and we shall do well, indeed, and shall serve our generation according to the will of God,' by acting on these principles in all our educational employments, avoiding practical errors in their application, and connecting them with a lively exhibition of the glorious gospel of the blessed God, in its distinguishing doctrines, after such methods as may be adapted to the mental stature and attainments of the objects of our care. There are hints afforded by this scanty review of the Swiss Reformer of education, which are calculated, by God's blessing, to prove useful to all who are in any way engaged in the same grand enterprise. OUR YOUNG MEN. POPERY AND ITS REMEDY. By Rev. G. W. Conder of Leeds. THE real essence of Popery, the germ out of which all its other specialities spring, is this, that it interposes something between man and God; an earthly service and rule, in addition to the simple appliance of the preaching of the truth, which is the immediate action of God upon man. Viewing God's relation to the church by the light of the first of our two texts the assertion of our Lord that His kingdom is not of this world, the essential error of Popery seems to be the putting a series of institutions and men upon the earth as the ministers of this divine rule, by whom and through whom God exerts his authority, and who exercise, therefore, a delegated power. The church, according to it, is not merely a collection of believers, having its few simple rules, such as are necessary to every society; but it is a centre and source of Divine authority over all who believe, with power to condemn and punish all who will not bow to its decisions. Or if we glance for a moment at our other text, 'The weapons of our warfare are not carnal'-which seems to indicate that the church is engaged as God's army in the opposition of evil in the world-the error of Romanism seems to be a direct contravention of this inspired truth. For its appliances, and the claims which its officers prefer, are purely and essentially earthly things. According to it, this God's-battle is not to be fought with the simple weapon of the truth, wielded by the simplest hands-sincere and earnest believers in the truth; but the men must have an authority derived from an earthly head, and the truth must be sealed by the church, and there must be many external attractions hung about it, and the whole thing must be carnalized, if God's work is to be done. To this simple and sole source, I believe you may trace every feature of the system, viz., the interposition of something else between man and God, than the Bible and its earnest expounders. By the destruction of the once existing carnal dispensation, and the introduction of the new, not only without any similar institutions, but even with many express statements that the age for them had gone bye, and that now men were to look to heaven, and draw their religion thence by the sim. ple aid of the truth, God has virtually said, 'The sole medium between me and the world now, is the Truth, and the voice of men in proclaiming the Truth. The Bible is its own witness, and needs but to be proclaimed. Jesus Christ and Him crucified-His life and His death, are the religious powers.' There, (as I have frequently shown you of late) is Temple, Law, Priest, Authority, Sacrifice. And had the Church simply confided in that, I believe that Christianity had now possessed far wider sway. Now mark the insidious, carnalizing process. God handed down to man in the first christain ages-what? A fact; and its interpretation. He chose certain men, illumined them to perceive the meaning of the fact, confirmed their mission, and attested their utterances, and then left the world with the truth so attested, and with no successors to those authorized teachers, that is to say, no more miraculously endowed ex pounders of the message. Henceforth men were to preach their truth so given to us. But their message was susceptible, as every human sentence must be, of various interpretations. Men were divided about it. Each one wanted to make men believe that his was the truth. Not content with saying, 'Look at the source whence I derive it, and see,' he wanted some external proof. Miracles were gone. He must therefore fall back upon some substitute. And so, in process of time, sprang up that heresy of a professed derived authority from the Apostles. You will easily see how necessary it was to fix this on one man in one Church, and so have but one direct line of this authority. Because if there were two men, there might be two interpretations, opposite ones; and two Churches contending for opposite faiths, both authorized, and so mutually destructive. There, then, you have the first subtle, carnal element thrown about the truth-humanly derived authority. Out of that, as a positive necessity, sprang a hierarchy, with its various grades. Every member must have some physical contact with that human fount of light and power. As his sway came to extend over a large surface, it was impossible he could have this contact immediately and personally with all the believers. So that he must have a select circle to whom he should communicate the authority, Archbishops; then another and wider one, Bishops; then another | and still wider, Priests; and through these the whole people might receive this transmitted authority. That is the simple philosophy of the hierarchy. All this you see, from such a little thing,— the want of some external authority in connection with the truth. Having claimed this, it became necessary to support and enforce it. Hence excommunications, and persecutions, and absolutions, and penances, and fasts, and the whole carnal appliances by which Rome makes her rule to be felt. This process, once begun, was sure to grow. This door opened, what things might not come through it? If one human thing had been thrown around the truth, why not others? Moreover, against such a claim, unless there were something to show for it, men were sure to revolt. If you preach the truth to a man, and say, 'It is God's truth, see for yourself at the source whence I gain it,' you at once place him in contact with God. If he reject, he is not rejecting your truth, but God's. But when you claim dominion over his faith, you rouse his intuitive consciousness of accountability to God alone. Something more then, was needful, and also easy. First, make the truth, and the religion to which it tended, acceptable to men, that they might not wish to revolt, and might fancy music in the rattling of their chains.' And next, in case of failure so, get hold of earthly, carnal power-the State's dungeons and swords; exclude them from civil rights and enjoyments; and, also, shake in their face the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and tell them of a purgatory, over the fierceness of whose fires you have control; consum. mate your power by wielding also the authority over heaven and bell; and so convert the world. Now, brethren, if this be a true account of Popery, its essence and its origin, and the process of its developement, see, in a word, the position in which it places us, in relation to all existing church claims. It embraces a wide range of things. If a man come to me with anything else than the Bible, and what he can make me believe from that, if he come to me with any Apostles' Creed, or Nicene Creed, or Augsburg Confession, or Westminister divines' Catechism, or Methodist Catechism, or Thirty-nine Articles, or Congregational Declaration of Principles, and say, 'That is the truth: believe that or you cannot be saved: God expects you to believe that,' -I reply, 'Brother! it is human, it is carnal, it is man's word and not God's, and I will not believe you. Show me the coincidence of your creed with my Bible and then condemn; or, rather not condemn, but leave me to my conscience and my God.' It may be very well for you to say to the world, that is what I or we believe as the interpretation of the word. But the moment you present your creed to a man in place of God's word, you are interposing the human between God and man, and that is Popery. So if a man come to me, and say, 'I have a church's authority to preach to you, and demand your faith and your submission, your attendance at my church, and your compliance with its forms, I say to him, Brother! shew me your divine credentials, direct and unimpeded by human interventions, and I will listen to you. But, even then, if you would interpose yourself, or any of your practices, betwixt God and me,your baptisms, your confirmations, or the like, I must decline your ministrations, and deny your mission, for God hath made me a priest unto Him through Christ, and by Him hath given me" boldness of access unto the throne." Let me, now, direct you to a few words about what I deem to be the failing of Protestantism in the past, and its true course at the present juncture. It seems to me not to have gone nearly far enough in its opposition. Indeed, it could not, without condemning itself, and hence the source of its weakness. Itself has relied upon temporal power and authority, has allied itself with the powers and potentates of this world, has availed itself of the earthly splendour and pomp, and has, in some degree, claimed to wield the delegated sceptre of heaven. It has looked too exclusively at one aspect of the doctrinal error of Popery. This is seen in its favourite motto Justification by faith in Christ alone.' Indeed, it has not lived up to its own principle. For many of its own professed adherents contend for the efficacy of sacraments and rites, and the validity of holy orders to acceptable service. It preaches justification by faith alone, but it does not wholly practice it. For if any right additional to faith be essential, then it is not 'faith alone.' Moreover, it has looked too exclusively at justification-man's acceptance with God. Now the great and fundamental error of the Romish church is, not the interposition of mediators between a man and God's pardon of him through faith in Christ, but a wider thing-the interposition of a great human system between the man and God's direct action upon him by the truth. It has looked at the gospel simply as a way of pardon, and not at its wider bearing as an economy -as an appliance for the conversion of the world. And so it has frittered away its action in attacks upon the detail,-in cutting at the branches and leaving the root intact. It has been laboriously disproving the Apostolic authority of the Pope, the real presence in the sacraments, the existence of a purgatory, the infallibility of the church, the rightness of image worship, and the invocation of saints, instead of bending its whole strength against the source of all these things-the interposition of any thing or being between God and man: whilst all the while it has been practically denying the purely spiritual character of Christ's kingdom, and of all the appliances by which it is to be established in the world. Here, then, my brethren, do I see the real cause of fear at this crisis. Not in the strength and aggressive movements of Popery, but in the defects of our Protestantism. Not that we may have to fight this battle hand to hand again, but that a large part of our army is trying to do it with the arms of the foe, with carnal weapons. Not that this Church, which has ever been a tyranny, and the ally and friend of tyrants,-which proudly tramples wherever it reigns,-which has been the blight and bane of every land in which it has reigned for ages past, as France, and Spain, and Portugal, and even Italy herself, do mournfully attest,-which chains our Bibles, rails off the altar of our God, puts our consciences and souls into human hands, dazzles us with earthly splendour and so blinds us to that of heaven, and brings again the folds of Jewish darkness over the unveiled, opened shrine ;not that this church, always greedy of filthy lucre, and lusting after the dominion of this world, is about to rear herself, in visible magnificence, on Protestant soil-consecrated to Protestantism by the blood of hundreds of faithful martyrs, and the struggles of as noble a hero band as earth's history can boast:and by the very side, too, of that other church which is considered by many, to be the stronghold of God's truth in the world. Not in that fact alone. Had we all faith in God's Truth, and were we all prepared to do battle with the spiritual weapons alone, I should say, Rome comes to court defeat.' But in the fact, that the tendencies have been at work in ourselves all the while, and that the current Protestantism has so many affinities with its foe,-in that, I do see cause, not, indeed, to dread the failure of the truth in its onward pro gress to the subjugation of the world, but to fear that the conflict may be a very prolonged one, and may have to be fought by a very small band. If hell were to rise against Christ's church, I should calmly say, 'God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. No power of earth, therefore, can shake my faith in the triumph of truth. But the faithful struggle for it may be fierce and long, may greatly check our peaceful progress in the work of God's vineyard, and may perhaps entirely sever us from many we have counted friends.-From a Sermon, published by B. L. Green. THE SABBATH SCHOOL. THE OBJECTS OF SENIOR CLASSES CONTEMPLATED.* 'That the soul be without knowledge, it is not good.' Prov. xix. 2. THE objects contemplated by the establishment of senior classes have been in part stated, namely, the retaining of youth under religious instruction, and guarding them from the seductions and snares which surround their path. In entering further into this subject, let us keep before our minds the interesting group for which we should be increasingly anxious. They are accountable, immortal beings! Youths, whose characters are rapidly forming, and whose destinies are on the point of being decided for time and eternity, a band of young persons, subjects of the government of the great Sovereign of all worlds, with momentous consequences depending on every inch of time which they are now occupying. Bright are their anticipations, and bouyant their hopes. Each possessed of an immortal soul of priceless value, which, once lost, worlds cannot redeem; and yet hourly in dan ger of this loss-surrounded by those who would thus rob them-enticed to risk eternal happiness for momentary gratification. I. What do we purpose concerning them? The primary object is to secure their eternal safety, and to aid in fortifying them with correct principles, that they may be able to resist all those adverse powers and influences to which * From the Crisis,' a Prize Essay. By H. Hall. London: B. L. Green. | they are exposed. We are concerned to communicate knowledge which shall elevate and make them powerful for good-superior to all earthly wisdomtrue wisdom, whose origin is Divine, the entrance of which giveth light to the dark mind, and ‘is full of good fruits.' We seek to teach them the fear of the Lord,' which is the beginning of wisdom;' to know what the only and all-wise God has said for thefr benefit, rather than what great and learned men have said. The miser may teach them how to hoard up riches; the idler, how to live at ease; the ambitious, how they may obtain 'honour' and renown.' But we have a far higher aim; it is that we may instruct them how to obtain durable riches,' to lay up treasure in heaven,' and to provide for the exigencies of a dying hour. We seek to teach them how they may live with a conscience at ease, die in peace, and obtain everlasting rest. We wish to show them how they may possess eternal honours, immortal glory, unending happiness. The senior class then is instituted to bring young persons to God, that 'he may be the Guide of their youth;' and to Jesus Christ, the Friend of youth, that he may be their Friend. O glorious object! How it would rejoice an angel to be an instrument in God's hand to bring a soul to Jesus! for it fills an angel with rapture to tell even the news |