longed to us, when we shall say, served from these evils? Remem- " 5. The only remaining argument I shall mention for early piety is derived from the honour which will thus accrue to religion, and the effect it will have in promoting the glory of God. Whatever may be the zeal of persons who are brought to the knowledge and love of the truth, at a late period of life, they possess not the same means of glorifying God, by a long and consistent course of religious conduct which are enjoyed by those who have remembered their Creator in the days of their youth. We doubt not the faith of the thief upon the cross; but how little could he do to exhibit the nature and fruits of true religion, if compared with Timothy, who had devoted himself to God in his early years. In following the course of such a man, amidst the changes of life, we see the power of his religious principles in their application to daily occurrences; and the most inattentive observer is forced to bear testimony to their efficacy, which sustains him in the slippery paths of youth, which keeps him unspotted by the vices and uninfluenced by the love of the world, which consoles him in affliction, which strengthens him in temptation, which enables him, amidst many trials and provocations, to possess his soul in patience and in peace, and finally conducts him to cheerfulness in grey hairs, and teaches him to welcome the approach of death, as a messenger from his Father in heaven, sent in mercy to conduct him to his own abode. How blessed is the man who has thus had the privilege, from youth to old age, of adorning the Gospel, happy in himself, and diffusing happiness all around him; whose life has been, as it were, a sermon to be read of all men, attesting the power of religion, and the faithfulness of God, putting folly to confusion, and vice to the blush, and constraining many, whom no other argument would reach, to acknowledge the grace and power of the Gospel of Christ! III. But it will now be proper to say a few words on the means of attaining and preserving the remembrance of our Creator. 1. And, in the first place, since we are by nature strangers to Divine truth, let us be ready to receive instruction from those who are wiser and better than ourselves. When parents endeavour to open our understandings, and to lead us to the knowledge of God, let us learn to listen with the deference and respect we owe to the best friends we shall ever have. Other persons may have an interest in leading us wrong: a parent can have no interest but the happiness of his child, and no motive but affection for him. On the same principle it will be our wis CHRIST. OBSERV, No. 200, dom, as it is our duty, to attend to all who are authorised or able to instruct us, not leaning to our own understandings, but shewing all readiness, with meekness and simplicity of mind, to profit by their lessons. 2. Let us search the Scriptures. They are the revelation of our Creator. They will not only remind us of him, but they contain all the knowledge of him which it is essential to acquire, and "are able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." Let it not suffice that we hear them read on certain stated occasions: let us examine and study them diligently for ourselves. And that this duty may be properly performed, let us fix regular times for the employment, and consider them as sacred, persevering in the practice under the impression that it is indispensably necessary to our religious improvement. Let 3. Let it be a fixed principle to avail ourselves of all other means of grace, of the ministration of the word of God, of public and domestic worship, and, if arrived at a proper age, of the sacrament of the supper of the Lord. But above all, let us live in the habitual exercise of prayer and thanksgiving. us cultivate a devotional spirit, praying especially that God would open our understandings to comprehend his will, and our hearts to embrace his salvation. And here I would express my regret that so few young persons are to be seen at the table of the Lord. Our church invites, and expects, all who have been confirmed to come to the holy sacrament, and to partake of its benefits, provided they come in the true spirit of repentance and faith. We have been exhorted to remember our Creator; and we know who has said, "Do this in remembrance of me." 4. Let us endeavour to form a habit of seeing the Creator in all things; of recognizing the hand of God in the works of nature and the 3 U with his wife's family, he felt, or fancied that he felt, the privation which he endured in having begun his education at Selby, in Yorkshire, and finished it at Bolton in the Moors, in Lancashire. The consequence of this feeling or this fancy in favour of the University (for, though I have lost him, I cannot help seeing that his wish was not a deliberate act of reason to the exclusion of fancy or feeling), was a dying request to me that his child might pursue the path which had been closed against himself. I could only say, that I would execute my trust as his substitute, with an earnest desire to act, when the time of action might arrive, as he had wished; yet still reserving my own Christian discretion as the guardian of an immortal being, for whose welfare I had become responsible. You will perhaps be tired with my preface, but I have now done. The time of action is arrived; and I have deeply and anxiously reviewed the reasons, which twenty years ago decided me in declining to place my own son in scenes, the temptations of which had nearly proved fatal to myself, when I was of his age. In my efforts to come to a satisfactory conclusion on this point, my principal assistance has been derived from the conversation of the friend to whom I alluded at the beginning of my letter. He has brought from Cambridge many college partiali1ies, and some university prejudices; and while those which I brought with me in the same manner, have been gradually worn out by the perpetual collision of other objects of greater local interest and importance, or perhaps have been even cautiously erased by some newer principles which I have imbibed, Cambridge and our old college are still, in his eyes, not only, as compared with all others, the first university in the world, and the first college in that university, but are positively, and with out any comparison with any kin dred object, as unexceptionable as human institutions can be found or made. The objections, therefore, which I have urged to the system of the place, have been collected rather from his answers, under my crossexamination, than from his own original statements; and as we may each perhaps go too far in our respective views, I wish to submit the subject to you as our umpire. My leading questions referred to the domestic economy of the college (with respect to the persons admitted about the young men while they were actually within its walls); the means which they had of leaving or entering it at night after the gates were nominally closed; the restraints, if any, which were imposed upon their conduct in lodging houses; the state of the streets; and the discipline of the place with respect to wine, and to public amusements of every kind. I said little to him, and I shall say less to you about the studies of the place, because the mere Cambridge Calendar will sufficiently prove, that the emulation to attain the distinctions of the University is more extensive and more uniform than ever. But mathematical and moral excellence are not necessarily co-existent. I return, then, to the more doubtful points in the system. With respect to the first subject, he admitted, on my asking the question directly, that all the bedmakers in our old college, without one exception, are young women, and, with few exceptions, rather shewy in their persons. It is unne, cessary and unbecoming to pursue the subject farther. I will only say, that no man bas a right to put temptations in the way of another, least of all in the way of one entrusted to his care. He is not to say, I will surround the tempted with so many counter-securities, that if he will but make use of them, he must escape. The question recurs, Does your own experience justify your reasoning? And, in this case, are not the evils purely gratuitous? Is not the hazard uncompensated by any one advantage? Is it not then the duty of the master of the college to remove a danger and a scandal from his walls, instead of introducing a temptation so dangerous, because so legalised, into the most secret retirements of his college. With respect to my second question, my friend tells me, that a great improvement had been adopted at Cambridge just before he left it. Gate-bills, or (if you are not a Cambridge man) registers of the hours at which young men enter the college after ten o'clock, are now sent in to the tutors every morning, from the keepers of the lodging houses, as regularly as those from the college porter. He added, that the owners of these lodging houses having to rely so much more deeply and permanently on the favour of the tutors than on any one individual young man, would never, from any partial motive, refrain from making a regular return to the tutor of all the misdeeds of his pupils; and as the masters of the house were always to keep the keys, there could never be any collusion between the servants and the young men. I might have answered, on general principles, that the present advantage of retaining a lodger, whose irregularity might perhaps be known only to the people of the house, and, if divulged by them, would perhaps entail upon them, by the expulsion of their tenant, a share in the punishment of his offence, might probably induce even the master of the house to connive at a violation of the law; and, at any rate, as the keys must occasionally be out of his hands, he could not at those times answer for the use that might then be made of them. But I was not left to this mode of argument, as I produced a letter which a friend at M had lent me, from his son at college, telling him as a good joke, that the mistress of his lodgings had asked him that morning (the new law had been promulgated on the preceding day) at what hour of the night she should fix the time of his return home? It may be very true, and I believe it is true, that to those who live within its walls, the difficulty of leaving the college is almost insuperable, and the act of entering it after the gates are shut, is always punishable; but this advantage is dearly purchased in my eyes, by the risk to which I have alluded in the last paragraph. With respect to the state of the streets, he admitted that things were very bad; that the worst temptations were presented to the eye, and, as in the first question, were brought to the very doors of the young men; whereas, in the sister university, whatever evil may exist (and it is not slight) must be sought out at some distance, and with some exertion and trouble.— He added, that bad as things were, they were not worse than they were in our time; "and you see," said he, "how you and I have turned out." My painful answer was, “I admit that they were bad then, and God forgive those who made, or found, or left them so bad; but the duration of the evil is no justification of it; and till you tell me that the attempt has been made to remove it, and has failed, I shall believe that the duty, and therefore the responsibility, still rests upon the rulers of Cambridge." Why, may I ask, are there not specially appointed some assistant proctors, for the single purpose of clearing the streets from the "pestilence that walks by night, and the arrow that flieth in the noon day?" In Oxford the office exists, and exists with an activity and a success equally exemplary and encouraging. With respect to the private entertainments of the young men, I did not press the revival of sumptuary laws, because, though in a college, they are not liable to the specific objections which a political economist might urge against them, they are detrimental to the cultivation of that moral discipline and self denial which it is one of the highest objects of an university education to force. But, though I would willingly permit to young men the liberty of arranging the times, the duration, and the nature of their entertainments, I would make them answerable for the misuse of the liberty; and any instance of excess I would punish, not as the college punishes it, with an imposition of a hundred lines, but with that moral reprobation which a parent ought to feel, and which those to whom, in the University, a parent's duties are delegated, ought to apply without fear and without reproach. To the Editor of the Christian Observer, THE interesting paper of H. G. in your Number for March, seems to be decisive of two facts; first, that no particular version of the Psalms is strictly authorized by the Established Church, and, secondly, that the use of hymns, and consequently of metrical versions of the Psalms is permitted by it. The justification also of the use of hymns from the language of St. Paul, and from the practice of the early Christians, appears to be complete; and I heartily concur with H. G. in his desire to promote the formation of a better collection of hymns for the use of the church in our own days. While, however, such rich models of spiritual psalmody as occur in the sacred volume remain to us, I cannot but consider the formation of an improved metrical translation of those Psalms a good and promising preliminary to the collection required. Nothing, I imagine, would tend more, under the blessing of God, to raise the tone and style of our original hymns than such a translation, executed in a I grieve to add, that the letter already quoted contained another fact, which necessarily, from its nature, is of more public notoriety, and which therefore I have no scruple in repeating. The writer boasted of having been at Newmarket with two hundred and forty other gownsmen. I have little knowledge of the details of the rival systems of the two universities: but I could not help contrasting with this laxity of Cambridge discipline, the practice of the University of Oxford, or rather of its principal college, in which I have heard that the last and great-taste and spirit worthy of the subest of its Deans caused the name of every member to be called over three times during the continuance of the Bibury races, so as to prevent, by a physical possibility, the access of his pupils to such a scene of contamination. Some of your Cambridge friends may perhaps tell you, that there is little foundation for some of these charges, and that, at any rate, all are exaggerated: I place myself, therefore, more immediately under your guidance, requesting you to take up the subject yourself, or to encourage some of your college friends to do it. I am convinced of the purity of my object, and I pray that a blessing may rest upon every attempt to eradicate evil, and to plant good in the earth. CLERICUS ÉBORACENSIS. ject; nor would any thing serve better to expose the comparatively poor and jejune effusions, with which we are too often satisfied, than the contrast which such a translation would exhibit, if it caught any thing of the manner of the original. Those prophetic Psalmists drank deep of the spirit in which they wrote; and although their knowledge of Divine truths was necessarily incomplete, and the doctrines of redemption and sanctification were seen by them, as through a glass, darkly, yet did that distant view leave upon their feelings a more vivid impression, and beget more "breathing thoughts" and "burning words," than are to be found in the very best of uninspired compositions since the advent of the Messiah; compositions, nevertheless, which I am far |