ing gained the manly, and for awhile holding the faith neither in meek dependence on authority, nor in genial repose on the universal Reason and Conscience, but by the little personal tenure of private argument. And sometimes, it is productive of dark agonies of doubt and loneliness, drearier than death; leaving the soul exposed upon the field of conflict, without a God to strive for, or a weapon for the fight. Happily, however, the moral struggle of this period comes before the mental; and is well over with the faithful, ere the needed strength is broken; and oftener than is guessed, I am convinced, it is the issue of the earlier battle of the Conscience, that really determines how the later strife of the Intellect shall end. Men that have lived a few years of hardness for God's sake, are rarely left by him to roam the wilds of doubt alone.

It is not much perhaps that direct and purposed teaching can contribute to the efficacy of the religious sentiments. But its happy avail, whatever it be, depends on its conformity with the conditions we have traced. If only we will not hinder, God has a providence most rich in help. Judge not the child's mind by your own; nor fancy that you have a religion to create against some powerful resistance, which skill is needed to evade or proof to overcome. His spirit, if unspoiled, is with you, not against you, when you speak of God. Faith is the natural and normal state of the human heart; doubt is its feverish disease: and that which may be the fit remedy for your sickness, may be the poison of his health. He needs but the fresh air and pure nourishment of life; give him not the phar

4

macopoeia of theology, instead of the bread of heaven. Disturb him not with unprofitable "Evidences:" they are burdensome as the statutes-at-large to the heart of spontaneous justice; misplaced as a Court of Chancery in Heaven. He has already the truth which, at best, they can only have prevented you from losing: it is not the tenure, but the scope, of his belief that is given you to improve. And in your efforts to enlarge it, it is well to proceed outwards rather than inwards; to awaken apprehensions of facts, more than reflection upon feelings; to glorify for the young disciple's eye the world around him, by lifting the veil from what is beautiful in nature and great in history; and not drive devotion back upon self-wonder and self-scrutiny. The attempt to elicit a religion by interrogating his consciousness, and to find in his heart all the mysteries of a metaphysical and moral experience, will end only with affectation in the appearance, and unsoundness at the very core, of his nature. The green fruit may be sweetened by confectionary arts; but the fermentation of the oven is not like the ripening of the sun; if it hastens the relish of the moment, it kills the seed of future hope. Scarcely need the child know that he has a soul; it is ours to take care that, when at length he finds it, it shall be a noble and august discovery; full of admirations never to be superseded, and of love that shall bring no repentance. For this end, his teaching should be mainly external and objective; given with an eye ever fixed on the true good which he most readily discerns to be great and sacred. Let Palestine be to him, as to so many ages it has been, a Holy Land; and Je

sus, in his gentle majesty, the fixed and realized representative of God; and the high deeds and souls of the past be claimed as the expressions of his will; and opening glimpses be afforded into that natural universe which he rules in the spirit of the divine Nazarene. Yet withal, the exigencies of a more advanced age, though not anticipated, need not be forgotten. Some prospective regard may be had to the reflective years which will bring their wants at length; and without teaching any present Theory of Religion, its future demands may be remembered in a thousand ways. If you would prepare, not a mere baby-house, but a right noble structure of faith, in which the soul shall have a life-interest, you will not only lay the foundation broad and deep, but avoid filling in with mean and perishable materials the parts, of which the childish eye may see the surface, but which only the manly thought can build in strength. The unnoticed outline of system may be so drawn, that painful and deforming erasures hereafter may be spared: and by mere expansion of the old boundary, and insertion of new beauty and new wealth, the earnest veracity of the philosopher may be but the glorified piety of the child. As larger views of the universe and life are opened out, a Providence will be felt to abide there still the laws which are detected, the unsuspected grandeur that is revealed, will be entered in some orderly manner, as parts of the mighty scheme; and, instead of subverting the central and divine authority, will be but a province added to its sway. And as the years of deep and subjective religion come, and the mind sinks in wonder before its own mysteries, the

self-consciousness, as it wakes and starts up, will on the instant see God standing in the midst. Such at least is the tendency of instruction wisely given. Still we must remember that religion is after all beyond the range of mere tuition. It is not a didactic thing that words can give, and silence can withhold. It is a spirit; a life; an aspiration; a contagious glory from soul to soul; a spontaneous union with God. Our inward unfaithfulness is sure to extinguish it; our outward policy cannot produce it. To love and to do the Holy Will is the ultimate way, not only to know the truth, but to lead others to know it too.

XV.

LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.

ROMANS Xv. 1. 3.

WE THEN THAT ARE STRONG OUGHT TO BEAR THE INFIRMITIES OF THE WEAK, AND NOT TO PLEASE OURSELVES:-FOR EVEN CHRIST PLEASED NOT HIMSELF.

In the grouping of nature, dissimilar things are invariably brought together, and by serving each other's wants and furnishing the complement to each other's beauty, present a whole more perfect than the sum of all the parts. The world we live in is not a cabinet of curiosities, in which every kind of thing has an assortment of its own, labelled with its exclusive characters, and scrupulously separated from objects of kindred tribe. The free creative hand distributes its riches by other order than the formal arrangements of a museum; and, for the happy life and action of the universe, blends a thousand things, which, for ends of knowledge only, would be kept apart. A single natural object may be the focus of all human studies, and present problems to puzzle a whole congress of the wise. A tropical mountain, for instance, is a seat for all the sciences; and from the snows of its summit to the ocean at its base, ranges