to be makers of canons for a new church, nor to invent dogmas to overturn an old one; nor to be professors of proselytism, nor wrangling polemics, nor conductors of controversy, nor settlers of disputes disputes which will continue to be agitated as long as men have hot heads and proud hearts; as long as they possess vanity or curiosity, impatience of restraint, or a love of opposition; a weariness of sober truths, and a thirst after the fame to be acquired by their subversion.

Why will women of sense, then, defeat their providential destination? Why desert their proper sphere, in which they were intended to benefit, to please, even to shine, at least as stars of the second magnitude? Why fly from their prescribed orbit? Why roam in useless and eccentric wandering,

"And, comet-like, rush lawless through the void,"

and then having for a season astonished with their false and momentary blaze, fall disregarded and forgotten?

These well-meaning ladies would be among the last to use their allotted measure of grace and accomplishment, to any purpose which they believed to be improper; yet they require to be told, that neither should their talents be exerted to the purposes of spiritual seduction; that they should not be employed to disturb the faith, to shake by dispute, or weaken by persuasion, the steadiness of persons who, without their endowments, are perhaps in a safer state.

But though the writer cannot hope that these

observations will produce any effect on those who are already embarked on this sea, without a shore, and without a bottom, happy would she be, if they might become the means of preserving one inexperienced female from the perils to which novelty, curiosity, and pressing invitation, too easily allure.

Her sure preservative from this danger is to cultivate deep humility and self-distrust, to keep clear of the very threshold of innovation, to avoid the first step; for all the subsequent ones are easy. Let her bear in mind, that, once seduced, she may find, that "when she would inherit the blessing, she may be rejected, and find no place of repentance, though she may seek it carefully with tears."

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ILL EFFECTS OF THE LATE SECESSION.

AMONG the evils to which the late secession has contributed, those we are about to mention are of no light nature. It has been the means of exciting a sort of spiritual vanity, of awakening a desire of departing from received opinions, in certain young persons, who may be designated by the name of premature instructors. It has increased the alienation of the lower orders from the church; it has afforded to some who are not favourable to serious piety, a pretence for indiscriminately classing together men of different views, characters, and principles. Among the more respectable, it has stirred up a spirit of debate and controversy, by no means friendly to the cause of genuine Christianity. We shall notice these effects in their order.

There is scarcely a greater mistake in morals, than is committed by those who habitually speak of vanity as a trifling fault, as a small pass not worth guarding. There is, perhaps, scarcely an error which is so generally adopted, and so carelessly overlooked. It finds its way into characters of every species, and almost into every individual of the species. There is not only the vanity of beauty, of rank, of riches, of learning, of talents, but, as we have already observed, vanity intrudes itself into religion itself.

A bold familiarity with Scripture, an unhallowed touching of the sacred ark, not as formerly by sceptics and scoffers only, but by persons professing, and we believe intending to be religious, are, it is to be feared, becoming too common. This, like many other of our offences, has its foundation in vanity. It is obvious that an unwillingness to be taught, and an impatience to teach, mark the character of the present day.

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There is a scion from this presumptuous stock, which, perhaps, has not had sufficient time to grow, in order to become generally known, but which is beginning to sprout up in certain provincial towns and villages. There is a growing disposition in a few arrogant young men to read the Bible with their own glosses and interpretations, and to aim at proselyting, and "taking captive" not only silly women" but silly girls. Several of these persons, as soon as they began to open their eyes on the importance of religion, or rather before they were broad awake to its truths, have undertaken this gratuitous tuition. Instead of taking time to promote their own advancement; instead of learning wisdom by an increasing discovery of their own ignorance; instead of improving in Christian knowledge by the only legitimate methods, diligent study of the Bible with the aid of the soundest commentators, both accompanied with fervent prayer for that light they profess to seek ; — without consulting able ministers, without taking this straight and obvious road, on their own very slender stock they set up for teachers themselves. Instead

of looking to the experienced and the wise, they collect a little group to look up to them, thus inverting the Apostle's observation-for they "when for the time they seek to be teachers, have need to be taught themselves, which be the first principles of the oracles of God." If this spiritual vanity should flourish, we shall soon have none left to learn; all will be teachers.

Thus the raw and rash Christian, confidently jumps over all the intermediate steps between the enquirer and the instructor, and despising the old gradual approach to the sacred temple, despising the study of books, of men, and of himself, starts up at once a full-grown divine; the novice seizes the professor's chair, erects himself into a scholar without literature, and a theologian without theology. On the strength of a few texts ill understood, and worse applied, he undertakes to give his young neighbours new views of the Bible, and without eyes himself, sets up for a guide of the blind.

These young persons, in reading the Scriptures, seem to be setting out on a voyage of discovery of something new, rather than on a course of observation on what their precursors have done for them. They search not, with devout enquiry, but fearless curiosity; they look out for passages written in a different connection, and applied to different purposes, and then try to prove that they produce no consecutive reasoning, that they do not establish the generally received doctrines. How should they? They were never intended to produce the