in the hope of inducing warm-hearted and ingenuous youth to hold frequent and studious mental converse with one whom they may with such advantage select to be their guide, philosopher, and friend.* "TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD. "The pre-eminence of truth over falsehood, even when occasioned by that truth, is as a gentle fountain breathing from forth its air-let into the snow piled over and around it, which it turns into its own substance, and flows with greater murmur; and though it be again arrested, still it is but for a time-it awaits only the change of the wind to awake and roll onwards its ever increasing stream. But falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment-one crackling blazing moment, then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them." "AN ADMONITION. "There are two sides to every question. If thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell on the foolish, perplexing, imprudent, dangerous, and even immoral conduct of promise-breach in small things, of want and punctuality, of procrastination in all its shapes and disguises. Force men to reverence the dignity of thy moral strength in and for itself-seeking no excuses or palliations from fortune, or sickness, or a too full mind, that in opulence of conception, over-rated its powers of application. But if thy fate should be different, shouldst thou possess competence, health, and ease of mind, and then be thyself called upon to judge such faults in another so gifted;-O! then, upon the other view of the question, say,-Am I in ease and comfort, and dare I wonder that he, poor fellow, acted so and so? Dare I accuse him? Ought I not to shadow forth to myself that, glad and luxuriating in a short escape from anxiety, his mind over-promised for itself; that, want combating with his eager desire to produce things worthy of fame, he dreamed of the nobler, when he should have been producing the meaner, and so had the meaner obtruded on his moral being, when the nobler was making full way to his intellectual? Think of the manifoldness of his accumulated petty calls! Think, in short, on all that should be like a voice from heaven to warn thyself against this and this, and call it all up for pity and for palliation; and then draw the balance. Take him in his whole,—his head, his heart, his wishes, his innocence of all selfish crime, and a hundred years hence, what will be the result? The good-were it but a single volume that made truth more visible, and goodness more lovely, and pleasure at once more akin to virtue, and self-doubled, more pleasurable, endures! And the evil-while he lived, it injured none but himself; and where is it now? in his grave? Follow it not thither." "THE EDUCATION OF CHILdren. "In the education of children, love is first to be instilled, and out of love obedience is to be educed. Then impulse and power should be given to the intellect, and the ends of a moral being be exhibited. In this object much is effected by works of imagination; that they carry the mind out of self, and show the possible of the good and the great in the human character. The height, whatever it might be, of the imaginative standard will do no harm; we are commanded to imitate One who is inimitable. We should address ourselves to those faculties in a child's mind, which are first awakened by nature, and consequently first admit of cultivation, that is to say, the memory and the imagination. The comparing power, the judgment, is not at that age active, and ought not to be forcibly excited, as is too frequently and mistakingly done • Learning at the same time to shun the errors which are to be found in his earlier days. in the modern system of education, which can only lead to selfish views, debtor and creditor principles of virtue, and an inflated sense of merit. In the imagination of man exist the seeds of all moral and scientific improvement; chemistry was first alchemy, and out of astrology sprang astronomy. In the childhood of those sciences the imagination opened a way, and furnished materials, on which the ratiocinative powers in a mature state operated with success. The imagination is the distinguishing characteristic of man as a progressive being; and I repeat, that it ought to be carefully guided and strengthened as the indispensable means and instrument of continued amelioration and refinement. Men of genius and goodness are generally restless in their minds in the present, and thus, because they are by a law of their nature unremittingly regarding themselves in the future, and contemplating the possible of moral and intellectual advance towards perfection. Thus we live by hope and faith, that we are for the most part able to realize what we will, and thus we accomplish the end of our being. The contemplation of futurity inspires humility of soul in our judgment of the present. I think also, that the memory of children cannot, in reason, be too much stored with the objects and facts of natural history. God opens the images of nature, like the leaves of a book, before the eyes of his creature, man, and teaches him all that is grand and beautiful in the foaming cataract, the glassy lake, and the floating mist." "BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. "The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary is it to be plain. This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian-and let me assure you that there is great theological acumen in the work-once with devotional feelings-and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours. I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best summa theologiæ evangelicæ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." "ON PRAYER. ་ "Mr Coleridge, within two years of his death, very solemnly declared to me his conviction upon this subject. I was sitting by his bedside one afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others, but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. But I have no difficulty,' said he, in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness as we forgive., I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will. O, no! my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and surely do the thing He pleaseth thereupon -this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare on earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord.' And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what a sight was there!" With a few lines from one of his own poems, which might well have been written for his own epitaph, as most truly delineating his own character, we must for the present bid farewell to this truly Christian poet and philosopher. "Sickness, 'tis true, Whole years of weary days besieged him close, But he had traced it upward to its source, Knew the gay wild-flowers on its banks, and culled ART. V.-Hints to Students of Divinity, &c. By JOHN BROWN, D.D. Edinburgh: Oliphant, 1841. Circumstances are now beginning to call the attention of the Church to her students. For the last two years, indeed, the evangelical party had been beginning to see the necessity as well as the duty of exercising a far more vigilant superintendence over those who were training up for the ministry, than had, at least for a century, ever been thought upon. It was well. For how could the Church expect a race of godly ministers to arise out of students whom she had utterly neglected-over whom she had never watched nor prayed. God had indeed wrought marvellously in her behalf, notwithstanding all her past remissness. He had raised up a noble band of faithful ministers in the midst of a slumbering church, and even under the eye of ungodly teachers and professors. But though God wrought this in his sovereign grace, yet what Christian, what church, could count upon such a blessing being continued, so long as they remained wilfully overlooking so momentous a duty as that of cherishing the youth under their care, and training them up a seed to serve the Lord in their day and generation. Still it was only to a general sense of duty that the Church was awaking. She felt the necessity of superintending more vigilantly the education of her students,-not merely to watch over their education, but to cherish and cultivate the seeds of living piety in their souls. But this was all. Doubtless had she been allowed quietly to pursue her evangelical career unmolested by Moderatism within and civil despotism without, she would have proceeded onward in her plans, and matured a system, not only of intellectual but spiritual education. Or rather, she would soon have succeeded in carrying out and bringing into full play the schemes of almost superhuman wisdom left undeveloped by her mighty founders. Still, the new circumstances in which an ecclesiastical dismemberment has placed us, has of necessity drawn her attention more fixedly and minutely to this point. The demand for labourers has on the one hand called us to consider how these may be obtained, and on the other led us to inquire anew into the whole subject of their previous training for the ministry of the gospel and the feeding of the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. The first question no doubt was, How shall we get ministers? But this, after all, is not the main one. For it is the same as our established opponents are asking, How are we to get men to fill our vacant churches ?* And truly they may get men enough, for aught that we know of their resources. They may get men to be put into the priest's office for a bit of bread. They may get men to perform the mechanical routine of preaching, and praying, and administering the sacraments. They may get men to put on the attire of ministers, and ascend the pulpit each Sabbath-day, in miserable mimicry of the ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that may content In the filling up of these benefices, what an amount of political and clerical profligacy has been displayed. Each man is selling at his price-poor neglected preachers scrambling for a living of any amount, and ambitious clergymen toiling hard for preferment to better livings than in their fondest dreams they could ever have hoped for before. To ride rough-shod over the people was only what might have been expected; but to ride so recklessly over consistency, and principle, and character, not to speak of piety at all, is as fearful as it is sad. And then to stand up before God and man, and declare that zeal for the glory of God, love to the Lord Jesus Christ, desire of saving souls, and not worldly motives,' are their motives in entering on the ministry! Was there ever perjury or profligacy to be compared to this? What would these men say to Whitefield's letter to one of his friends, which thus concludes, 'till you hear of my dying for or in my work, you will not be apprized of all the preferment that is expected by George Whitefield.' them. What more would they have? But with any true church of Christ, the main question is not, How are we to get men ? but, How are we to get LIVING MEN? How are we to secure a race of living ministers, pastors after God's own heart, who will warn the wicked, and watch over the blood-bought heritage? How are we to get living ministers?' is the question now forcing itself upon the attention of our Church. Nor can any question more vital, more momentous, ever come before a church of Christ. It is not the getting of men that is the question now. Nor is it how may we best secure that they shall be learned, able, eloquent, polished, educated men.' No; these may be very needful points; but they are of the second grade. They are not the essentials, they are not the sine qua nons. They ought not to be overlooked by any church, but care ought to be taken that they shall only occupy the second, and not the first place in the training of our youth. They have too long been treated as paramount; they have too long been allowed to swallow up the more important; they have too long been held in undue estimation, even by the people of God. Hence the wisdom of man's words has so often made the cross of Christ of none effect. Hence the taste and passion for eloquence, pulpit eloquence, have vitiated the simplicity of our taste, and destroyed the relish for ungarnished truth, and mightily contributed to hinder the simple and natural preaching of the everlasting gospel. Hence popularity has come to be such an element in judging of ministers, and hence popular preachers are too often preferred to the plain ambassador of Christ, who is Ambitious not to shine nor to excel, But to treat justly what he loves so well. We do rejoice that the question regarding ministerial character and qualification has at length found its way into a higher region, and is to be treated on higher principles, and as embracing more spiritual elements than it has hitherto done among too many even of the Reformed churches of Christendom. We rejoice that our circumstances have at length brought us to this. It is high time that it should be so. We have too long occupied very worldly and secular ground in this matter, and too long weighed ministers in the balances of worldly literature, or science, or eloquence; and too long treated our students as mere aspirants to literary fame, instead of being those to whom we were to commit the weightiest charge and the most solemn responsibility which can devolve upon either man or angel. When the question is put, 'who is sufficient for these things?' it is high time to answer it as the Lord himself teaches us, my grace is sufficient.' We have too long said that learning, or talent, or eloquence, were enough to |