abilities; and it is a duty to cultivate them with reasonable assiduity; and, by the blessing of God, no evil but much good will arise from so doing. But how many languages, oriental or occidental, I should be glad to be informed, will compensate for a child being "liver grown," (Evelyn's word is very expressive, and speaks volumes,) and dying at the early dawn of his opening faculties? Surely here is a striking lesson of moderation to Christian parents; that in gratifying their own vanity, they do not macerate their beloved offspring. There is a lesson also of contentment for those parents whose children are the reverse of precocious; for if they ripen into well-informed and truly Christian men and women, the anxious parent will have no reason to regret that they did not carry half a score of languages or accomplishments to an untimely grave. Had Richard Evelyn and young Drusius both attained maturity, I greatly doubt, whether at the age of thirty or forty they would have surpassed in intellect and attainments many far less hopeful pupils; but I have no doubt at all but that their energy, both of body and mind, would have been so prematurely wasted, that they would not have performed in the actual business of life, or even of literature, one-half of what has been accomplished by thousands of less promising scholars.

I think there is often a fallacy, if I may so express it, in the tears which are shed over the bier of precocious children, as if what had been taken away had a religious worth, which, as before remarked, does not belong to it. It is true that heaven is the region of light and knowledge; but it is far more eminently the atmosphere of love, and joy, and holiness; and though in our intellectual development we resemble, in a manner which the brute creation cannot do, the Image in which we

were originally created, yet we also resemble condemned spirits, who did not lose intellectuality in losing the moral image of God; whereas in the spiritual exercise of the affections, grounded it may be on a very imperfect expansion of mind, we are like our Maker in the most exalted qualities to which human nature, sustained by Divine grace, can advance.

There is sometimes, I apprehend, no small measure of jugglery in the apparent precocity of children; it being merely the exercise of the memory while both the moral and the intellectual powers are very feebly expanded. The consideration of the latter defect (the intellectual) does not fall particularly within the train of religious allusion in his letter; otherwise I should trouble you with a few remarks upon it. For sure I am that there is not a more fallacious precocity than that which results from the mere exercise of memory. It is, indeed, an important part of education to communicate the knowledge of facts; but it is a much more important part to lead the youthful mind to reason upon them. But instead of this, the mind is often oppressed with aliment which is never digested or assimilated, and therefore does not minister to mental health and vigour. The exercise of the intellect, within due bounds, is of far greater moment in early life than indiscriminately tasking the memory. And it is with these faculties as with the bodily organs, that the too great use of one often weakens another. A boatman has the upper half of his frame firmly knit and powerfully developed; while the nether, for want of use, shrinks into feebleness. The same remark applies more or less to every trade, profession, and occupation of life. Thus in like manner, a child instructed merely by means of its memory, learns to neglect the use of its reason; and thus while it grasps facts it cannot rightly em

ploy them. For ultimate effect, the basis of early mental vigour is a far more solid foundation than the accumulation merely by dint of memory, of the utmost acquisitions of science or scholarship. This matter is better understood now than it was formerly, and hence education is becoming less parrot-like and more intellectual; but much remains to be accomplished before the evil will be wholly remedied, more especially as stipendiary instructors find it more easy to make a child learn by rote ten pages than to teach it to understand one.

But this, as I before said, is not our question, which concerns religion, not intellect. But even in what is called "teaching the truths of religion" the same defect too often occurs; the memory is overloaded, while the understanding is little exercised, and the affections are wholly untouched. I have been quite astonished at the magpie effusions of some quinquennial religionists; but there was as little of the head as of the heart in the performance. Had such a child died early, it would, perhaps, have been thought that he was precociously intellectual and early devoted to God; whereas he was a mere receptacle for the storing of words. Many of these words might afterwards be useful; and I would not absolutely say that we must never, on any occasion, teach a child any thing by memory which he does not at the moment perfectly comprehend: but my notion of what is scriptural and reasonable would extend a great way in that direction, if not to that precise limit; and sure I am, that wherever may be the exact line of division, the practice in many religious families is to exceed it. I have felt this even in reading such invaluable books as Janeway's Token above mentioned. Take from such narratives first, all that was remembered without being understood; and secondly, all that

was understood without being felt; and both the religion and the precocity will be considerably reduced in magnitude. A wise Christian parent will be satisfied, if after a large deduction on the first two items, there remains on the third such a measure of true piety as may be effectual to salvation, though it may be of little value for biographical brilliance.

Thus have I run on with these cursory remarks. The sum is, that precocity is not to be desired, and that the tears shed on the graves of precocious children are often made more bitter by the mixture of other ingredients than those of simple parental affection. The parent thinks what such a promising child would have been; and secret disappointed vanity and self-love unconsciously add to the bitterness of his bereavement. It may console him to reflect that, very probably, his fond hopes would have been blighted; and that the blossom thus early stimulated would never have ripened into any extraordinary excellence of fruit; so that he has lost his child, not in his hour of promise, but in his early noon, from which his manhood would have been only decadence. But it should console him more to reflect, that even if those opening talents would have expanded to the gigantick powers of a Newton, and those early Christian virtues have been matured to the spiritual growth of an apostle, they have been enlarged immeasurably more in the heavenly world than they would have been here upon earth; and that so far from being nipped in the bud, they have only been transplanted to a more genial clime, where they could unfold for ever, watered from the fountain of Omniscient wisdom, and vivified by the direct beams of the Sun of Righteous

ness.

I am, my dear Friend, ever yours in Christian affection,

The essays reviewed in the following short article from the London Evangelical Magazine relate to subjects which few know how to treat well, and which we have long wished to see taken hold of by the hand of a master. The author of these essays appears to be such a master, by the representation of his reviewer, and by the short extracts which this article exhibits. We hope that some of our enterprising printers will, without fail, republish this small work in our country.

ESSAYS, designed to afford Christian Encouragement and Consolation, By John Sheppard, Author of "Thoughts on Private Devotion," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 368.

We hailed the announcement of this work with peculiar satisfaction. The former productions of the respected author, especially the volume on Private Devotion, had evinced so much accuracy of thought and tenderness of feeling, combined with such deep and unobtrusive piety, as to lead us to anticipate a high degree of valuable instruction from the same pen on the important subject of Christian encouragement. Nor have we been disappointed. On the contrary, we do not hesitate to express our conviction that the present volume, taken as a whole, exceeds in interest and originality any one of Mr. Sheppard's former publications. It bears the attractive impress of individual experience, and is evidently the result of long-continued, accurate, scrutinizing observation on the hidden and complicated, as well as the more obvious and prevailing, processes of thought and feeling incident to a mind of exquisite susceptibility under the pressure of mental and bodily suffering; yet sustained by the superabounding

influence of Christian principle, in the "faint yet pursuing" exercise of Christian duty.

Such a work was much needed; for, amid the numerous publications on subjects somewhat analogous, not one (so far as we are aware) has been expressly adapted to that interesting, though not very numerous, class of readers who are aptly designated by our author as "reflective, questioning, pensive, doubting, and, in some sense, speculative." Such persons are often unable to appropriate the ordinary kinds of consolations. A keen discernment readily discovers essential points of difference in their individual experience which seem to exclude them from the sphere of general encouragement. Addresses to such must possess a specific character, an evident adaption to their peculiar circumstances. Proof must be afforded that the essential nature and immediate causes of their mental sufferings are well understood, before they can repose confidence in the prescriber, or implicitly yield to the discipline which he may suggest. An attentive perusal of a single section of the volume before us cannot fail to inspire that desirable confidence. A vivid description of many painful and perplexing states of mind is given with scrupulous fidelity, accompanied with remedial suggestions, dictated alike by scriptural truth and by a happy experience of their efficacy under similar sorrows. And although no individual mind can be the exact counterpart of any other mind, yet, as a specimen of a peculiar class, it may exhibit so many points of general resemblance as at once to excite a tender sympathy and the cheering hope that a state before supposed to be unparalleled and irremediable may yet yield to those

Divine influences which, in this volume, are shown to be fully adequate and available even in the most complicated and apparently anomalous cases.

Mr. Sheppard's familiarity with intellectual analysis as well as with scriptural truth has eminently qualified him for the task he has performed. Nor has his acquaintance with human physiology, and with physical science in general, been altogether unavailing in his endeavours to trace the mutual influence of the body on the mind, in the production of many morbid states of feeling which are often attributed solely to mental causes. Our author's varied stores of learning and research, though always employed with singular unobtrusiveness and modesty, are yet brought to bear, with admirable propriety and effect, both in the illustration and enforcement of his leading positions.

It would be unjust to our author not to remark, that much judgment is exercised in the mode of treating those mingled and varying states of feeling to which we have before alluded. No encouragement is afforded to the fancies of a morbid and distorted imagination. The good is carefully separated from the bad. Faithful reproof is administered where it is needed, not less than appropriate consolation. Evils are not extenuated in the mind and character because they may happen to be associated with some highly intellectual and interesting qualities. A rigid, honest scrutiny is employed, and every thought and feeling subjected to the test of divine truth. We are happy to be able to add that a rich tone of devotional and evangelical sentiment pervades the whole.

In

truth it may be said that the work has a holy, practical tendency, being peculiarly adapted to rectify intellectual obliquities, and to give a scriptural and useful direction

to an order of minds possessing susceptibilities for elevated enjoyment and intellectual enterprise, as well as for intense suffering in all the refinement of intellectual misery.

Our limits compel us to withhold from our readers the general analysis of Mr. Sheppard's pages which we had prepared. We must conclude with merely presenting them with a list of the topics discussed and a specimen or two of our author's truly original manner of treating them.

I. On the value and credibility of the Gospel; and its adaptedness to our Sorrows, Fears, and Moral Necessities. II. On strained Interpretations of the Doctrine of Faith or Conversion; which may induce a despondent impression that we are and shall be destitute of it. of it. III. On suspicions that Faith may not be genuine, induced by the frequent observation and partial experience of Self-delusions. IV. On Fears that Faith or Conversion is not genuine, arising from a nice analysis or scrutiny of Motives. V. On the painful Doubts excited by the prevalence of Evil and Suffering in the World. VI. On the Difficulties occurring in Revealed Truth, and in the study of Scripture. VII. On the Despondency arising from a sense of great and multiplied Sinfulness, especially as aggravated by a professed reception of the Gospel. VIII. Of the Pain endured in the loss or want of social Blessings, which would be peculiarly dear to us. IX. On Adversities in pecuniary circumstances. X. On the Fears of a widowed Mother. XI. On the Christian Interpretation of mysterious Chastisements. XII. On mental Illness or Debility. XIII. On distrustful Anxiety for the Coming of Christ. XIV. On the Promise of Eternal Life, as the great remedy of Earthly Sorrows.

In relation to suspicions that