their own intrinsic majesty, but) in relation to the condition of the individual inquirer: so viewed only, and considered quite unimportant, as articles of faith, except in that view. We cannot be too thankful for better teaching and sounder belief on this point but there does seem to be danger of erring the other way, and of being satisfied to hold doctrines simply, without regard to the personal relation in which the individual stands to them. And it seems to us this error is especially inexcusable in the doctrines of the visible Church, and communion of saints. The articles of the Creed which precede these are revealed subjectively only by a wonderful act of Divine condescension. Their glory were all-perfect if man were not. He may, indeed, rejoice that the Divine Nature in each Person is for him-on his side but chiefly he must adore the Majesty which is without, beyond, above him: he must look upon the Form of the Perfect Man and see in It the Incarnate God. But (if we may say such things,) the visible texture of the living Church seems to have been woven together, for the very purpose of enclosing within itself the individual being of each immortal Person. It would seem as if her priesthood, her sacraments, her creeds, her liturgy, were no essential part of the spiritual temple, but rather divinely-authorised accessories, valuable according as they are effective in training up her living sons: and if so, not so much to be gazed upon, as acted up to, and used, by each individual in his own case, for the purpose which (as it seems to us) called them into being. We do not say these things are not to be believed: they must, or we could not act upon them: nor that the Catholic Church is not to be believed in; nor that She is not endued with a personality. We hold that, by ineffable union with her incarnate Head, she so becomes His Body that His Personality pervades her wholly; and thus she becomes an object of faith, and through her and in her is seen, and believed, and loved, and worshipped He Who is All in all.

Still (we think) it remains true that her earthly constitution is rather to be felt, and dwelt in, and acted in, and loved as it is known subjectively, than looked upon, and admired from without.

In this view, everything that is beautiful, attractive, and lovely in her system, becomes of immense personal importance to each individual among her members. For they all tend, as home comforts, to attach him to his domestic duties; and to encourage and bear him up when his duties become burdensome. This view should be connected with what our Lord and His true shepherds have always taught about the difficulties of the heavenward road; and thus a beautiful concord will appear to exist between the personal condition of an individual Christian, and the state to which he is called as a member of the Christian Fellowship. Tribulation to be endured: difficulties to be contended with self-discipline to be practised: this is his portion.

He is placed in the midst of a world abounding in things pleasant to the eye, and things to be desired-not that he may enjoy them, but that he may turn away from them, and wait for his portion in an unseen world, when all that he has been led by nature to desire shall have passed away. He is endued with affections capable of being gratified, if not satisfied, with objects immediately presented to them; but not that he may indulge them. On the contrary, he is bid to fix them elsewhere on invisible objects, for which they have no natural affinity. And he is to wait (with patience) for a future day, when faith and sight shall coincide. But nothing is more plain than that a future hope is not, by itself, sufficient to uphold most men in a continued course of exertion. This is seen in the every-day business of life. Few leave the station in which they were brought up. Few endeavour to rise above it. Not that most men despise wealth, or honour, or station, or power. On the contrary, there are hardly two opinions on these points, when the question is, whether they be desirable for a man's self or no. Every one (speaking in a general way; alas! that it should be so in a christian country,) thinks it would be a fine thing to be rich, or powerful, or honourable: and yet they don't try to become so. Why? Because the hope of a distant good is not sufficient to stir them up to the needful course of exertion. They would rather be at ease, and go plodding on in their accustomed way, than undertake a great work to obtain what they value very highly, if they could have it now. But to live in the meantime on the hope of it:-it is not worth the sacrifice. And they who do become great, and rise above their fellows, are evidently not upheld by the hope of future fame alone, or wealth, or power. They love their very labour. They have fellows in their pursuits, and they progress together, upheld by party feeling, the excitement of business, and the daily little foretastes of what they look forward to as the end. This is eminently the case with persons engaged in literary pursuits. Not only do they take pleasure in their employment, enjoy the society and intercourse of those who are like-minded, and feed in secret upon the consciousness of being (and becoming daily more so,) men of learning, but they have an affection for their very books; enduing them in fancy with a sort of personality, and then loving them. We have heard that Southey, when the powers of his energetic mind were completely broken up, was accustomed to take down, now and then, one of his books, look at it, kiss it, and return it to its place. A most remarkable instance this of the incidental, homely, every-day little enjoyment, which had contributed its share of encouragement in a wearisome life of study, outliving its more energetic and obvious coadjutors.

Not a whit different is it with the great work of a self-denying Christian. He cannot live on hope alone: he needs a present

earnest of his hope. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and to cure or alleviate this sickness, some present remedy is required. Frail man cannot be ever on the wing, like that bold raven who went to and fro above the earth, until the waters of the flood were dried up. Like the more timid dove, he requires a present rest for the sole of his foot: and that rest is provided for him in the ark of Christ's Church. Shut up, even when the wearying restlessness of the world seems to be rolling over his unprotected soul, within her unseen bounds, he is conscious of a present blessedness. And in this consciousness he rejoices amid toils and troubles, not lazily and apathetically, but laboriously and patiently, because he knows that the blessedness of his condition depends upon his diligence and watchfulness. He is conscious of being one of a family high in their Father's loving favour, and this thought upholds him in a childlike obedience, though it be for the present, and through transitory circumstances, very irksome.

This subjective view of Church-fellowship we think of wonderful importance in the case of children. Indeed, we believe its full practical force can never be wholly realized by any, but those who have been trained from their very childhood to live in it-to live on it, as the natural atmosphere of their spiritual life. Human hearts are not flexible enough to adapt themselves to a new home, with the fond feeling with which memory clings to the home of childhood. Full-grown imagination cannot throw such a lovely, mellow, glowing, peaceful light, as once beamed on her dwelling, around a second home. Just so no up-grown man or woman, instructed never so well in the theory of Church doctrine, can so realize the Church as the home of a self-denying discipline, as a child can. It is when the heart is tender, and the will flexible, and the affections quick, and faith implicit, that they can be so made consciously one with her, that they never will go out from her. And this alone (when it is remembered that hers are the promises,) might be enough to show the great importance of early training in this and kindred truths.

But far more than this: we hold that the doctrine of Churchfellowship is absolutely and primarily necessary to a religious education: that it occupies the prominent place among all revealed doctrines, (and we shall soon show that we are not speaking on our own private judgment, or unsupported by authority,) in the training of the infant mind. This we hold to be the first abstract religious truth which a child can realize. It is, we know, (as has been remarked in one of our late numbers,) extremely difficult to get children to realize spiritual truths. In one sense they are more subject to the visible and tangible than grown persons. It is all but impossible for them to lay hold on the unseen. distant future is unreal mistiness to them. It eludes their grasp, and fades away from their eye. And so of other hidden things;

The

they form but a fleeting image of them all. But, if there is one truth which belongs to them especially, (as the fifth commandment of the ten is theirs,) it is that of which we speak-the Fellowship of the Saints, the bond of Spiritual Brotherhood. This coincides with all they know, and have realized, of things that now are. This speaks to their experience.

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For what do children know? In the abstract nothing: not even themselves. They know themselves only relatively. They do not contemplate themselves. Good children do not think about themselves: they do their duty naturally: they are obedient, kind, affectionate, without knowing it: they act with cheerful readiness at the bidding or wish of another, without the consciousness of acting: they live in the consciousness of others. Others know them by name; they know themselves by name, only because others call them so. This is not their real notion of themselves: leave them alone and they will class themselves by relationship. For instance; we meet a little child in the lanes of Dorsetshire. We ask, "Who are you, little girl?" the answer comes, Please, sir, I'm John Smith's little maid." It is not the great point to her that she is, by herself, Emily, or Bessie, or Mary, individualized: she is her father's "little maid," and as such she describes herself. The conscious existence of such children is as members of a family: they know very little of themselves, and still less of the world in which they live; but they do know the mother that bare them, and in her smile they are happy; they do know the father that supports them, and in his favour they rest satisfied: their brothers and sisters they know, and double all their joys by sharing them with them; and all their little duties are instinct with the life of love from these home influences: they cannot stand alone, and treat with independent persons: they cannot make a compact: no, they are children first, and then obedient, loving, trustful: first brothers, then kind and unselfish brothers.

Such is their chosen position-chosen for them by unerring Wisdom; one every way suited, with all-admirable tenderness, to their infant capacities. What can be more fearful, then, than that the very first step in spiritual knowledge should put them in a position contradictory to all the feelings which their (providential) training has fostered?-if stripped by the unnatural cruelty of a cold-hearted system of spiritual brethren, and torn with ruthless presumption from the home of their Heavenly Father, they are told of conditions of reconciliation. Thus are they constituted independent insulated individuals; and bid to make terms for themselves. Unaccustomed and unable to contemplate self, they are bid to look for the evidence of faith, i.e. if they are supposed to have it. Otherwise they are bid to believe, and they do not know what it means. It is explained: that only turns ignorance into perplexity. How can it be

otherwise, with such explanations as make faith be both everything and nothing? Then they are told fearful things about their own wickedness (hating good things, e. g.) which they know to be false; and thus again are they led to contemplate themselves in search of this monstrous chimera. So it turns

out that a good, amiable, sweet, simple-minded child's first directly religious instruction is often its first step towards moral ruin. All the heavenly instincts which constitute childhood a type of christian perfection, are suddenly checked by the rude violence of an uncongenial doctrine. They were being gradually leveloped under the appointed system of domestic discipline; but just when they should be exalted and purified by being exercised on higher and holier objects, they are suddenly cut across; miserably thrown back and stunted, if not wholly destroyed. If any life is left it must put forth its vigour in collateral branches only: the main shoot is industriously pruned down. Those traits of character which in every-day life imperiously claim admiration and love, are thought to be no index of latent spiritual capabilities; and teachers sigh over the thought of so much amiability and "seeming goodness" being compatible with a state of simple guilt and condemnation, when they have never once endeavoured to develop what they love and cherish, into the divine virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. If any children happily escape the stunting, deadening effect of such a system, it is because they follow (not wilfully, but by higher guidance) their inward instinct for truth rather than a false outward teaching.

But let a child be first instructed in the doctrine of Church Fellowship, and not only will those evil consequences be escaped, but his natural faculties, and especially those which have already been drawn forth by domestic relationship, will be harmoniously developed, and led upward from the known and familiar, to the unseen and awful realities of the spiritual world.

First, let him be conscious of a new relationship, and then he may come to understand to whom he is related. Teach him that he is a child; and then, with the keen spiritual perception of love, he will set himself to learn his Father's mind and will. Teach him freely concerning "the brotherhood," the word will fall with no strange inharmonious sound upon his ear; the thought it clothes will come home to his heart as a familiar guest. He will fall naturally into the ways of "the household;" will feel himself to be one of them; will claim his portion in their knowledge, faith, hope; and take his share of their duties of labour and patience. This, it seems to us, is the only order of teaching by which the mind and heart of children can be religiously developed. It is, as we have seen, the order which nature suggests; and, of course, the susceptibility of her suggestions, with which man is endued, sufficiently indi