on for years until they shall become mature in judgment and well taught in the essential truths of Christianity. Youth is an interesting and commanding period of life. And the Scriptures are eloquent with precepts, invitations, promises, and warnings especially designed for them. To the world-wide provisions and invitations of the Gospel, God seems to have added others for the encouragement and salvation of youth, who alone are addressed by the royal counselor in these words: "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." To them only does God say, "Those that seek me early shall find me." Impressions made on their minds not only strike the deepest but last the longest. Early acts of faith, confidings of hope, and thoughts of love, throw a bright and beautiful light on the pathway of life; and the first shadows of unbelief, error, and sin, cast a lengthened gloom along the path of bewildered youth and skeptical manhood.

2. Both in the family and in the Church, instruction should be adapted to the situation of children. They are surrounded by a vain and wicked world. Evils visible and invisible, audible and inaudible, tangible and intangible, literally throng them. In the street and in the house they make enduring impressions on their hearts. The world is full of sin, and, unless embosomed in parental solicitudes and guarded about by Christian teachings in all wisdom, our children will be corrupted and ruined. But should we get them interested in the Sunday-school we introduce them to associations morally healthful, and bring them under influences that are salutary and divine. If we may except the preaching of the word, there is no instrumentality better suited to usefulness, and really doing more to teach the young in reference to their salvation and in the direction of it, than is the Sundayschool, because of its adaptations to their situation and surroundings.

3. Religious teachings should be adapted to the end to be secured, namely, the salvation of children. It is a spiritual and religious work. The means used should be spiritual and religious. If we look at it in the light of the Scriptures and of experience, we shall see that the plan of God and of the Church, in the constitution of the family and in the adaptations of the Sunday-school, is wisely designed, and directed

to secure the Christian experience and final salvation of all the children of the Church. So far as human agency is involved, the enlargement and perpetuity of the Church depend on this work as truly as on any other. In the early history of American Methodism, before Sunday-schools became the active and efficient agency they now are, the conversion and Church-membership of children were lightly esteemed and unfrequent. Church enlargement was sought and attained rather by the conversion of adults, too often poorly instructed in the doctrines and duties of religion. By them errors were to be unlearned and corrected; evil habits were to be overcome; and the whole current of life had to be changed. But when, as now more than formerly, the divine mind is better understood and more fully carried out, the elements of a virtuous character are more early taught, the foundations of a Christian life are more deeply and firmly laid in childhood, and the relations of children to the kingdom of heaven are better appreciated, then shall we see the Church growing from within by a development of her embryo elements, both in numbers and in strength. This organic method of growth is not only taught in the Scriptures, but is according to the analogy of things in the family, in society, and even in nature.

It is highly gratifying and encouraging, that the largest Church organization in this country is beginning more fully to understand her duty in the work of childhood instruction and salvation. Her leading minds are looking at this subject as never before. Her wisest and most practical men are devising means and plans to make the work effective and general. As yet any systematic helps are few, and few are the wise and experienced laborers. When, however, the Church shall be fully awake both to the possibility of childhood conversion and to the best means of effecting it, then will it no longer be necessary for one to say to another, "Know thou the Lord; for all shall know him from the least even unto the greatest." The aims of our life-work and the height of our ambition should be, in the consummation of all duty, to say, "Here, Lord, are we and the children thou hast given us."

ART. V.-VOLTAIRE.

VOLTAIRE was born on the 20th of February, 1694. During his childhood he was the delight of his instructors, the Jesuits. Introduced into society by the Abbé de Châteauneuf he was early initiated into the elegancies of life and all the refinements of wit. In the midst of a circle of courtiers and epicurean abbés, his youth was all that could be expected— openly dissolute. At twenty he composed fugitive rhymes bearing the impress of the facile philosophy of Chanlieu, and competed for a prize offered by the Academy, in an ode on the decoration of Notre-Dame! This early education clung to him all his life; through his struggles, success, and fame, he retained till death a taste for trifles and elegant corruption.

The Regent rescued Voltaire from this dissipated life by sending him to the Bastille for a mischievous piece of verse which he did not write, thus procuring him his first leisure for meditation. When the young poet was set at liberty, after several months of captivity, he had written or composed the most beautiful pages of "Edipus" and the "Henriad."

The enraptured public hailed the unknown youth, the author of "Edipus," as the lawful heir of Corneille and Racine. He had come forward at a propitious moment. The mighty inspiration that had animated the age of Louis XIV. had long since departed. There were a few men of talent whose success was various in their different kinds, but there was no genius. The inexperienced Voltaire at his first appearance brought a new element upon the stage, philosophy, free thought, which gained his verses enthusiastic applause.

It has been said that Voltaire wrote the "Henriad" more from vanity than enthusiasm. It is possible, for this youth had a lofty ambition, and was indignant at the general prejudices that denied the French nation the possession of the epic character. The "Henriad," styled first the "Poem of the League," had an immense success at home and throughout Europe. France plumed herself on having found her poem; Voltaire was the Virgil, the Homer, of the eighteenth century.

Unhappily there was lacking to him the faith essential to

the production of an epic, faith in things ideal and invisible. Yet this grand drama of the League and St. Bartholomew is full of feeling and animation. Passages of incomparable beauty, portraits largely and boldly drawn, ingenious comparisons, graceful terms, happy verses, the fascinating eloquence of improvisation, torrents of thought overflowing with youth and vigor, make the "Henriad" one of the masterpieces of French literature, and one of Voltaire's most valid titles to fame.

The causes that assured the success of "Edipus" contributed to the enthusiastic reception of the "Henriad." What was it at bottom but an eloquent pamphlet aimed at religious abuses? Despite the reticence and concessions of its language, no one is deceived. In the earliest period of the Voltairean philosophy nothing was strongly accented; irony was masked under an appearance of respect; the skepticism was uncertain, the thought playing on the surface of things; the attack was equivocal, indecisive, without precision of aim, entering upon religious ground only to strike at fanaticism and superstition. Beyond that the young poet prided himself upon his orthodoxy; he chanted dogmas, and defined them like a doctor of divinity.

The charm, the inspiration and life of the "Henriad," consist in an ardent, enthusiastic love for purely human and social virtues. The noble words, tolerance, liberty, independence, which now are commonplace and hackneyed expressions, then kindled men's imaginations. The age found in the poem the echo of its aspirations; free, independent thought was conducted by it from the narrow circle of a few philosophers into the broad popular domain.

In the year 1726, a victim for the third time of an odious exercise of arbitrary power, Voltaire went into exile, and with embittered feelings set sail for England, the land of liberty. A new world opened before him and enchanted him; England was to him the revelation of the genius of modern nations; the sight of a free country filled his heart with emotion.

No other traveler ever saw so many things and saw them so well. While he studied the principles of representative government and the machinery of liberty, he acquainted himself with the discoveries of science, industry, and commerce. A

daring speculator, he risked funds in distant enterprises, and laid the foundations of that immense fortune which was in after years to assure his independence and the security of his life.

Introduced by Lord Bolingbroke into the circle of the freethinkers of Pope, Swift, and Addison-Voltaire was soon intoxicated with the positive, materialistic philosophy of bold negations, then current in the upper classes of English society. During the three years of his exile he composed or prepared works that indicated a new and considerable development of his genius, "Brutus," "The Death of Cæsar," the "History of Charles XII," and the English Letters.

The "Philosophical Letters," written from England and scattered abroad in manuscript, were not published until after the brilliant success of "Zaire." Protected by the recent applause of all Europe, the author was respected; but the edition was seized, and the bookseller imprisoned in the Bastile. In these letters, under pretense of making France acquainted with England, Voltaire attacked all the religious and political institutions of his country. His lively and capricious pen dips into everything: theology, politics, geometry, the Church and literature, Bacon, Locke, Shakspeare, inoculation, the climate and soil, all are made to serve his purpose. The formidable talent to which he owes his power and popularity is brilliantly revealed in them, the talent for showing up the ridiculous and contemptible side of things. He does not decry a single abuse which we do not wish to crush under foot with him; we cannot doubt that he fights for justice and humanity; and yet we suffer from his attacks, for he disenchants everything he touches; he pays no regard to the natural instincts of the heart, he despises man.

"Brutus" was not successful as a stage piece. The French public was not prepared for those grand patriotic emotions with which Voltaire had become familiar in his acquaintance with England and the study of its theater. In this play he was inspired by Shakspeare, in so far, at least, as his peculiar genius could comprehend and appreciate the ideal beauties of the great poet.

In the "Death of Cæsar" the imitation is still more apparent. He seeks in it to awaken interest by strong and manly sentiments; he is large and simple.