they themselves falsely so called or regarded them. It is true that multitudes, yea, at one time nearly the whole population of Christendom, and always a great number of Christ's professing followers, have had strong delusion sent, that they should believe a lie; and moreover, God sent it; but upon whom? "They

who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." We may murmur at this, but we cannot contradict it. Judicial blindness of heart is the punishment of wilful disregard of God, and distaste for His truth. This may consist with many gifts and seeming graces: nay, with some real virtues, viewed in contradistinction to the evident vices of others. The new process of Electrotyping base metals with a coating of real silver or gold furnishes an apt illustration of what we mean. We behold an elegantly-fashioned article, on which the precious metal shines, not only in appearance but in reality. All that we see is pure gold; and for ornament or common use, it answers the purposes of gold every whit as well as the most substantial piece of the solid metal could do. But take it to the working goldsmith, ask him to break it up, and put it in the melting-pot, and re-cast it into some other form, what will he say to you? The peculiar distinction of God's own workmanship is this: He refines the metal from alloy; and such is its solidity that every separate article is available for any possible use He can see good to apply it to. Not confined to one form or to one purpose, it is ready to be moulded by his hand into the most dissimilar shape, still a vessel of gold, meet for the Master's use. We shall fall in, as we proceed, with some of these electrotyped counterfeits, and must givethem due credit for the portion of

fine gold spread over, and beautifully wrought upon them; but we dare not call them genuine plate; neither do we recognize every stamp as that of the goldsmith.

So long a preamble may require apology: but the subject is one so immensely important that, once at liberty to enter upon it, we must do so in the most deliberate manner. Improvements in the mode of teaching are continually propounded: improvements in the matter taught seem scarcely to be considered as attainable, unless it be by a particular class of writers, now very active, who would gladly banish the false glare of heathenish learning, if they might substitute for it the dim, flickering candle of semipopery, rapidly expiring into the gross darkness of the papal night. We are heartily desirous to fling to the moles and to the bats every vestige of the obscene mythology of paganism; but God forbid we should consent to replace them with the more specious, yet equally detestable demonology or Mariolatry of Popery, to which such teaching tends!

We have in our mind's eye some boys of noble birth, destined in all human probability, to occupy conspicuous positions in our country, should it please God to bring her safely through the dangers now menacing on every side. To them we will address, in colloquial phrase, some notices of great historical events and characters, brought to the test of scripture; and may the Lord, who hath no pleasure in unrighteousness, assist us in pointing out higher and purer standards of excellence than those of which the world accounts, as worthy its imitation.

'He will, with due care, and judicious management, become a great man, some day, said a noted phrenologist to the mother of a little boy, whose head

he had been carefully measuring. The lady smiled, for she had no faith in the system; and the boy smiled too, for he was highly pleased at the prognostication of future greatness. He had, indeed, a very intellectual-looking head and countenance, with so much natural quickness as to render him remarkable among children of four years old; and I could not but sigh, to observe the early aspirings of an ambitious spirit, almost certain, according to the course of this world, to be misdirected in its pursuit. Now, I am not going to measure your heads, my dear young friends; nor can I explore the depth of your hearts, much less can I read the destiny that, in the lapse of future years shall be revealed as the portion of each. You may become great men: and as you are nearer to manhood by some six or eight years than the little fellow referred to was, you are doubtless inclined to look more anxiously forward. Meanwhile, it would be curious to point out for, or perhaps in spite of, what strange qualities men have been distinguished by the very questionable title of great.

As a specimen of antiquity, Alexander the Great was a furious madman, a shedder of innocent blood, a desolater of unoffending villages, a profligate, a drunkard; and finally a premature victim to his own debaucheries: and coming down to modern times, even among christian princes, we find Frederic the Great, of Prussia, one of the most daring blasphemers that ever gloried in the shame of infidelity. Between these, history presents us with many a terrible character, legal and ecclesiastical, similarly entitled, but alas! far unlike those described by our Lord as being "called great in the kingdom of heaven," and we must find some other criterion of ex

cellencc, or of such eminence as a God-fearing man may dare to aspire to, than that which the world's caprice has supplied us with.

We read that in the days of Peleg the earth was divided and it would seem that almost as soon as men had partitioned what was then the known world among them, they began to invade each other's portion. The thirst of territorial acquisition is at once the most universal and the most unnatural characteristic of our kind. Unnatural, if we look at man as a being endowed with reason, and gifted with an innate sense of right; as all certainly are, for every man considers himself justified in defending his own portion, howsoever prompt he may be to seize on his neighbour's: doubly unnatural, when we consider the frightful cost of blood and suffering at which such acquisitions are gained. When the earth shall be so overstocked with inhabitants that it can no longer afford room to accommodate, or food to sustain them, then, and not sooner, may a plea be found for the struggle between contending parties for a portion of its surface. As yet, no such necessity exists in any inhabited part of the globe; and of untenanted regions, there are sufficient to lodge and to supply abundantly the utmost possible increase of human population. Take an individual in whom wars the lust of covetousness against the better knowledge that God has implanted in every human heart: he desires to possess that which has been given to another; he arms himself, sallies forth under cover of night, attacks a peaceable man in his dwelling, demands his property, is resisted, shoots his victim, is taken, tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged. The felon's fate was righteous; we may shudder at the

awful doom, but we admit that he suffered justly for his sins; and his name, while it continues in remembrance, wears the brand of infamy. Take another individual, possessed so largely of this world's abundance that in him the lust of covetousness grasps not at a single purse, but at the whole means of subsistence enjoyed by thousands of his fellow-creatures. Unlike the solitary robber, he has power to assemble many whom he can, by authority, or by hire, or by the influence of similar covetousness, induce to carry out his plans. He heads them, makes a forcible entry on the land that he has marked for his prey; carries misery and ruin, slaughter and desolation among all who resist his aggressive march. He succeeds in transforming to a desolate wilderness what was as the garden of Eden: and none having strength to punish him, he returns home, laden with what he has wrested away. But the Judge of all men has a tribunal before which every criminal must stand, and the wholesale robber and murderer is seized at last. Perhaps he may fall in battle; perhaps by treachery or revenge; or he may die in seeming peace, surrounded by his spoils: What follows? His survivors exclaim, and posterity echoes the saying, 'Oh what a mighty hero! well has he deserved to be called the Great.'

There were wars of old, when the God of the armies of Israel sent forth his people to battle, but in what capacity did they go? They went to execute the sentence formally pronounced by that Almighty Judge upon offenders whom He had doomed to death for their aggravated crimes against Him, their Creator and Governor. No analogy does or can exist between this and any other warfare. When the people