One Who shall rule all nations with a rod of iron; Who shall dash in pieces the man-made theories of scientific scepticism and selfish prudence as a potter's vessel is broken. But it is significant that this rational principle of Divine truth, to be born of the Church of God, is first to appear as an infant. He must pass through every stage of mental and moral progress, He must learn externally to reject the evil and to choose the good, before He deliver His people. May we not in reverence learn from this a mission and a mighty purpose in our existing educational establishments? In the Sunday school, properly conducted, the young can be trained in distinctive religious principles. There can they learn to eliminate the true from the false in scientific theory and worldly wisdom, and be furnished with the arms that may in themselves and to others,

"Vindicate the ways of God to man,"

until "a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation."

On examining this subject in all its bearings, it must be concluded that the Sunday school as it ought to be is almost the only public means by which systematic instruction can in future be imparted in the doctrines of our religion. Some may reply that the pulpit and the press are the more legitimate media for such instruction, but what does the assertion amount to? Let us take the case of the pulpit first. Amid a small thoughtful society of reading men in a quiet place, the desk may here and there be occupied by a man, sound and serious, learned and zealous, who preaches the doctrines of the New Church with a simplicity that is vivid and with a distinctive utterance that savours more of Hindmarsh or Noble than of modern pulpit oratory. But woe to the minister who comes with such scant claims for indulgence before the polite citizen of the town. He there meets with listeners educated rather to smart criticism than to deep reflection, men versed more in the rules of commercial morality or fashionable taste than in the sublime verities of a New Dispensation. If, then, the preacher aspires to popularity there, he must eschew doctrinal teaching; he must interlard his spiritual reflections with choice imagery or epigrammatic interlude; he must startle the worldly-minded among his hearers, disposed to doze over theology, by a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks, by racy anecdote, or unexpected flashes of wit. Even were such a preacher, by earnest striving, to overcome the general repugnance of city congregations to doctrinal teaching from the pulpit, the mixed character of his audience must militate largely against his success. An address to the young would be insipid to the elders, a sermon to the more intellectual would be little understood by the less educated members of the congregation.

Difficulties different in kind, but similar in degree, would operate in regard to the press as a main agent in religious education. Good books are indeed reservoirs of truth, but a more active agency than the printing machine is required to pour that truth out to the thirsty soul. Disquisitions on theology to benefit the million! to be read by the

million! Who ever heard of such things? We must create an appetite for reading these publications before we can hope for their success, and how difficult is the creation of that appetite! Such a creation is only to be effected gradually, under the Divine blessing, by the special education of the young in distinctively religious formulas. Thus we are brought again to the same question, the Sunday school and the Church.

In order to become the nursery of the Church of God the Sunday school must be the medium of systematic religious education. Theological instruction, where now given at all, is too often given in a promiscuous and indefinite manner, having to the mind of the scholar neither system, fixity, nor completeness. The iron is, alas! mixed with clay, and the wine diluted with water. Let us all recognise the importance of presenting truth in a manner suited to the ages and capacities of those to whom it is offered; but this is very different from the vague counsels and aimless discourses in which some at least indulge. The teacher of religion has as much right to be distinct and positive in teaching a dogma of his faith as a professor of chemistry to state a formula of his science; there is no more sectarianism in setting forth clearly a creed in theology than in a schoolmaster enforcing a principle of mathematics or a rule in grammar. One is equally necessary with the other, upon its own plane, and the Sunday school will only rise to its mission and begin to fulfil its true purpose when its teachers, casting aside every weight of secular reproach, and the sin of a vain universalism which doth so easily beset them, press nobly and steadily forward in impressing upon the minds of their scholars the direct lessons derived from the letter of the Word of God.

Compelled as we may be to answer the inquiry, whether the Sunday school has been the nursery of the Church which we hoped and believed it was, with a sad negative, we naturally ask further"What has the Church herself done to make it such? Have her members, externally considered, aided Sunday school efforts by their presence and example? Have they encouraged the workers, have they recognised and given direction to the work, where they have not partaken in their labours? Or, otherwise, have they evaded this duty until it has been forgotten that it is a duty, until they have rid themselves of all sense of responsibility? Have they held aloof too frequently from those who should have been their brethren in the vineyard, and allowed Sunday school teachers to become a distinct class, with diverse aims and separate objects?" If the former state of things exists, they might expect much; if the latter, they can expect but little.

The chief want of the Church at the present day is an active interest of its members in all its efforts, notably in its educational efforts. We require that zealous and large-hearted charity which is to distinguish the descent of the New Jerusalem into the hearts of men. I was once standing on the side of a mountain watching the ascent of the great

sun, as he burst in grandeur through the morning gates, and, like a warrior in his strength, flung down before him on one side and the other the giant shadows of the mighty rocks that gathered in hosts around him. I waited for his generous warmth, but felt it not, and sat, pencil in hand, with paper before me, endeavouring to depict the landscape thus unrolled, till my blood seemed almost frozen, while my hands trembled with cold. As I rose from my morning study I said to myself" Alas! how long is it after light has arisen upon the world before the warmth of the newly-risen luminary begins to make itself felt!" How often is it thus in the moral world! The light of the New Jerusalem has arisen upon our minds. The Divine Truth has poured upon the valleys of our natural faults and fancies: it has flung down by its own omnipotence the giant shadows of ignorance and superstition which had previously involved us in their spells. But has its warmth yet begun to rouse our torpid powers? Has the Divine Love yet touched our hearts with holy fire, and impelled us to unite and labour for the regeneration of the world? Has it welded together class with class and party with party in the Church, causing each to work for other and all for each?

It must be acknowledged that there does prevail in the Church an easy charity of opinion, much akin to indifference and hardly less dangerous, which looks with a favourable eye upon all educational and liberal efforts without examining closely into their real character. The disposition of well-informed Church members to acquiesce in and afford pecuniary support to everything of this kind which does not involve them in personal trouble or responsibility, is however very far from what the age requires of those who have new and heavendescended truths to communicate. We are commanded not to hide our light under a bushel of worldly concerns, but to put it in a candlestick, that it may give light to all who are in the house. Were such conduct ever demanded of a church, surely it is now in regard to the proper direction and efficiency of our Sunday schools. It is pleasant to find that in many New Church Societies individual efforts are made, usually by the ministers themselves, to initiate a system of genuine religious education of those children in their congregations who have had enough previous training to enable them to receive it. Still these are as yet but isolated instances, frequently too, and of necessity, distinct from the Sunday schools. What is most to be desired is, that this great Sunday school organization, with its machinery and resources, should become an engine as powerful as it is extensive for the systematic teaching of the religious principles which we believe mankind so much requires. This can only be done by laying down distinct doctrinal plans, and by carrying them out with that earnest love for the scholars which is so much more powerful than discipline or precept. It is only to be accomplished by the more intelligent and well-read members of the Church itself coming regularly among their brethren in the vineyard, assisting in the work, and giving of their abundant knowledge to those who may have less. The Truth

demands it; the Sunday school requires such assistance-its little ones cannot much longer be fed with the mere husks of secularism which have previously been their food. If the Church does not respond to this call, if she does not afford such distinctive teaching, then the days of the Sunday school, as an institution of its own, are numbered. It cannot long compete with day schools in secular education. If, then, it be not soon converted into that means for the dissemination of true Christian knowledge which is its highest mission and its noblest future, it will surely fall, and great will be the fall thereof.

I fear the aspect of the subject given in this essay is not a cheering one. I would it were more so, but as the facts of the case present themselves to me, even so I write. Should it perchance awaken a dormant sense of duty, or rouse a few to a knowledge of the tremendous issues at stake, I shall be content. I hope that none of my fears may be realized; that our best wishes for the Sunday school may be fulfilled; that the Church will continually put forth her intellect and vigour to teach these little ones and gather them into her bosom; but I venture to believe that it is only by such efforts as I have alluded to that, under a benign and guiding Providence, such worthy results can be achieved. J. W. T.

BIRMINGHAM.

A YEAR AGO.

'Tis a year ago that my darling died :
Only a year ago!

It seems an age since she left my side:-
But 'tis only a year ago.

'Tis a long, long time to miss her love:
Only a year I know;

But she left me lone when she went above;
And 'tis a long while ago.

'Tis a weary watch ere again we meet ;-
Time is so very slow

When the heart is longing its Love to greet;
And we parted a year ago.

We parted-ah! no, we are never apart;
Never apart I know;

For there is a voice in my inmost heart
That tells me we cannot be so.

And, whether I wait a long, long while,
A score of years, or so,

'Twill scarcely seem, when I see her smile,
That we'd parted an hour ago.

J. B. K.

Reviews.

DR. MAUDSLEY AND SWEDENBORG. No. I.

BODY AND MIND. HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.

THIS work is a collection of Lectures delivered before the College of Physicians, and of Essays which had been contributed to various magazines, and then published in a separate volume. They are now issued in a second edition by the learned and accomplished author.

Dr. Maudsley is a gentleman of great research, of profound reflection, of extensive reading, and whatever he writes it is valuable and refreshing to peruse. Yet he has not escaped from the snares of his profession; he constantly looks at subjects through the atmosphere of the lunatic asylum.

In his work on the Physiology and Pathology of the Mind you are conducted through all its chapters so constantly to the nervous system and the ganglionic centres, that you end with wondering whether in the ideas of the author there be any conception at all of such an existence as MIND, whether BODY is not everything.

Dr. Maudsley strongly condemns those philosophers of a former day who dwelt only on the mind, and disdained all reference to the body. We entirely concur with him and his school thus far, but is it not equally a mistake to devote ourselves exclusively to the body and ignore the mind? It is simply another phase of the same error,-viewing one side of the shield only, and assuming that there is no other side.

Dr. Maudsley's chief work is on the Physiology and Pathology OF THE MIND, and in the introductory chapter he advocates apologetically selfobservation as well as the anatomical observation of life as presented in the nerves; yet in the succeeding chapters on the emotions, volition, and so on, you scarcely find any reference to the soul and its faculties, but are informed of the actions which are due to "the automatic faculty of the spinal cord," and are told of "the sensory centres being clearly the independent causes of other actions" (p. 146). It is nerves, nerves, nerves; and the reader is tempted to say, If the nerves can do all this, there does not seem any good reason to suppose that there is such a thing as mind. Spinoza is quoted with approbation: "That men are entirely deceived when they deem themselves to be free." "Those who imagine they can speak, be silent, or act from the free decision of their own souls, are simply dreaming with their eyes open."

In like manner, in the present work, "Body and Mind," the latter is occasionally politely referred to, yet when any efficacious working of man is indicated, the cause is scarcely ever traced higher than the " nervous system;" the enslavement of the soul by sin is "bodily disease." The nature of mind, he says, is a "question which science cannot touch," and "he does not dream of touching."

BODY and MIND form a partnership, in which mind is a sleeping partner. yet so much that is inconsistent with this crops up in various portions of Dr. Maudsley's dissertations, that we cannot but think that if he would study Swedenborg in his own works, instead of doing it, as he unhappily has done, in the volumes of Mr. White, he would find the Doctrine of Correspondences precisely the method that he needs to throw light upon and introduce order into his studies, which contain stores of valuable observation, but are accompanied by a certain vagueness and haziness in all their relations to the mind.