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to influence as far as they may to a fulfilment of its conditions; but all this entitles them to no rank where no distinctions of rank can enter, to no privilege where equality is the prime attribute of the constitution. Their reward is of a totally different, and far higher kind. It is between God and themselves; and though it may bring after it, in the way of natural consequence, the benefits resulting from the esteem and love of men, such results are totally unconnected with the name of an exclusive, and the privileges of an incorporated class of society. Paul gloried in a name above the rulers who persecuted him, because in that name resided benefits which they knew not of. He gloried in his privileges, because they transcended any that could be obtained out of a spiritual region; but that region being once entered, that name once adopted, all distinctions cease, and the prelate who stands up in his stall is of precisely the same rank as the beggar who kneels in the aisle. There is no occasion to remind Dr. Whately of this; for no bearing can be more free from assumption than his, if we may judge from the spirit of his book; but we would ask him respecting the righteousness of establishments which directly tend to foster the error he so well understands, and to destroy in those less clear-sighted than himself the impression which it is of surpassing importance to deepen and strengthen, that the origin of Christianity is spiritual, that its aim is to spiritualize, that spirituality is its essence. If the people see men legislating, growing learned, getting rich, mounting from one dignity to another, by virtue of their Christianity, there is small use in telling them that Christianity is independent of all these things. It is far more easy, far more rational, far more honest to show them that it is so. As long as there must be privileges, and honors, and wealth, let them be conferred in reward of qualifications to which they are more appropriate; and then

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such men as Whately will be spared the vain and ridiculous labor of guarding individuals against errors which are hourly cherished in millions by the influence of institutions. This is like damming up a tributary brook, while the main stream rushes on with a perpetually swelling tide. — Dr. Whately cannot be spared for so idle a work. He has done much in searching out the source, and ascertaining that it is too ample to be dried up at present. His next labor should be to divert its course from the fair fields of promise which lie beneath its devastation.

It is a glorious office to teach Christianity at all; but the work is not invested with its full glory till that which is spiritual is wholly severed from its arbitrary connexion with the temporal adjuncts with which man is prone to combine it, through a clear perception of the reasons for such a disunion. Precedence settled by this rule is somewhat different from that which the heraldic science of modern Christendom has decreed. By this rule, the cotter, leading the Saturday night's devotions of his family, is greater in his office than the archbishop preaching amidst the state of his thronged cathedral; and the enlightened dissenting minister is more exalted than either. He has gratefully learned-it may be from the archbishop - the origin of the evils with which he would wage war, while he adopts whatever there is of rectitude in the practice of the cotter, with a clearer perception than his that it is rectitude. He has the privilege, with the prelate, of looking back into the records of all religions, and tracing the common source of all their abuses, while he is as free as his humble coadjutor from the entanglement of institutions which perpetually reproduce the evils he labors to destroy. In entering upon the high office of Christian instruction, the first prayer should be for spiritual requisites; the next, for accomplishment in the lore of the gospel and

of the human heart; and the third, for deliverance from factitious difficulties and self-created impediments. When these prayers are put up universally, with due sincerity of soul and energy of purpose, we shall hear no more of the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, with their distinctive errors and assumptions. Their peculiar claims, at any rate, and, we trust, their common vices, will merge in the prevalence of the church of Christ.

EXPOSITION OF PROFESSOR JACOTOT'S SYSTEM OF

EDUCATION.*

THE first thing to be examined into in considering the pretensions of any new system of education is its harmony with the whole constitution of the beings who are to be subjected to it. Nothing is easier than to discover methods by which separate portions of the human creature may be brought to a very high degree of perfection, provided other portions are left out of consideration; and a partial system may promise great things, and perform all its promises, without being at all fit for general adoption. Many an idiot with a marvellous memory has been made an idiot by the education of his memory. Many a dyspeptic mathematician would willingly give up some of his scientific attainment, if his dyspepsia would go with it. Many a man, the workings of whose intellect are unusually true, sighs for that

* A Compendious Exposition of the Principles and Practice of Professor Jacotot's celebrated System of Education. By Joseph Payne. London. 1830.

Epitome Historiæ Sacræ, adapted, by a literal Translation, to Jacotot's Method. By Joseph Payne. London. 1831.

harmony of spirit with God and man of which he has been deprived by being taught to pursue means as ends. It is quite as possible to make a child a prodigy of philosophy or learning at fifteen (at the risk of sending him out of the world at that age) as it is to make an infant twice the average size of infants by pouring in as much cream as the digestive organs will bear. The great question is, not whether these feats may not be achieved, but whether it is desirable that they should be achieved; and before the claims of any new mode of education are investigated, it should be ascertained whether, granting them to be sound in themselves, they are likely to interfere with other claims of greater importance.

Nobody disputes this; and yet what dreadful havoc do we daily see introduced into the constitution of the future man by the neglect of so plain a consideration! So bitter is the heart-ache which compassionate observers feel from witnessing the destruction of some component part or another of the unhappy pupils of new systems, that they are tempted, in contradiction to reason, to conclude that a fortuitous education is the best thing that children can be blessed with, after all. Such a conclusion is monstrous, we allow; but some excuse is to be made for it in the presence of all the immediate pain, and in prospect of all the future harm, caused by that exaggeration of systems already partial and exaggerated which now strikes us wherever we turn our eyes. It is melancholy to see a train of children going out to walk with open lesson books in their hands. It is melancholy to see the trickling tears which mock the parent, while he talks of the primary necessity of interesting children in what they learn. It is melancholy to see the irritability induced by perpetual interrogation, and the dislike to learn caused by the obligation to be always learning. It would be ludicrous, if it were not melancholy, to see little

ones of eight years old drawing maps of the English Constitution, and explaining the relations of the legislative and executive departments, of King, Lords, and Commons, before they have learned any thing of domestic government but what they must detest. It is really not to be wondered at that good-natured people would rather see these victims of system with the rosy face and round eyes of a ploughboy, and as stupid as he, than dwindled in body, and crushed in mind, as they are too often at present seen to be. The prospect is even worse than the present reality. What can come of the method (mistakenly called Pestalozzian) of interrogating children from morning till night, but that the timid will be dismayed and stupified, and the bold made superficial and conceited? Pestalozzi was perfectly right in avoiding the old system, where all was communication on the part of the teacher, and submissive reception on that of the pupil; but he little dreamed of what should be done in his name while he was doing every thing in the name of nature. If we may judge by much that we have seen, there will be, in a few years, an influx on society of conceited halfthinkers, of presumptuous all-knowers, who know nothing thoroughly, and have been too much habituated to answer questions when the solution was placed within their reach, to think of asking any when a reply is not quite so close at hand. We are far from wishing that the stir about education, through which all this has arisen, had not taken place. We are not so sanguine as to suppose that any reformation of importance can take place without the introduction and occasional prevalence of many errors; and we look for a certain, if not speedy, enlargement of views, and for a better direction of a very laudable zeal than that which has signalized the adoption of the many new systems of which we hear. What we desire is, not the relinquishment of what has been taught us from abroad, but its further prosecution;

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