bidding of a friend, discovered for himself what he had previously been told of by others; and he who at the bidding of a parent or a minister, makes a Bible the object of his daily repair and daily exercise, may at length find, that what before was only probable on the likelihood of another's testimony, is now palpable to his own vision.

21. We have long thought that in the education of artists, there is a beautiful and effective illustration of the same process-an actual experience of the most eminent in that department, admitted by many of them as a fact, though we have not yet met with an adequate or philosophical explanation of it in any of their writings. What we advert to is the difficulty, which a young practitioner or student of painting would find, if, placed amid a large and indiscriminate collection of pictures, he was left to discover the works of the best masters for himself; and how much it expedites the formation both of his judgment and his taste, to be told of them beforehand, so as that he might limit his contemplations or his studies, to the specimens of first-rate excellence which have been pointed out to him. The merits which he could not perhaps have discovered through a whole lifetime, he will, in the course of a few weeks, come to discern. He at length shares in the general taste and feeling of the connoisseurs, and that, not at the bidding or on the authority of others, but with a just and well-grounded perception of his own. It is most instructive to mark the respective parts, which the external and internal evidence have in this process; and how, by acting at first at the

bidding or on the testimony of his informers, when they told him which the works were of Raphael and Rubens and Vandyke and Titian—he is landed incalculably sooner than if he had been abandoned to himself, not in a factitious, but in an honest and wellgrounded admiration of their respective beauties.* Now all we affirm is, that what has been found experimentally, both to originate and to expedite the solid education of an artist, might originate and expedite too the solid education of a Christian. If the former is better of being told beforehand, what the works are which men of a heaven-born

See Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses, in three volumesWe more particularly refer Second Edition. London, 1798. to his own narrative of his own experience given in p. xiv, &c. In his Second in the account of his life prefixed to his works. Discourse, volume i. p. 38, he gives this advice to young artists

"With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather than your own. In other words, I would have you choose those of established reputation, rather than follow your own fancy. If you should not admire them at first, you will, by endeavouring to imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken." In his twelfth discourse, volume ii. p. 95, he observes that, "the habit of contemplating and brooding over the ideas of great geniuses, till you find yourself warmed by the contact, is the true method of forming an artist-like mind; it is impossible, in the presence of those great men, to think or invent in a mean manner; a state of mind is acquired that receives those ideas only which relish of grandeur and simplicity." Harris, the profound and philosophical author of Hermes, goes so far as to recommend, that we should "even feign a relish, till we find a relish come, and feel, that what began in fiction terminates in reality."

If these things (and for ourselves we have no doubt of it) be in the order, and according to the real working of the human faculties who does not see, that the actual Christian education both of families and nations, in every Protestant land where the scriptures are freely and fully taught, argumented by the learned and read by the unlearned, is of efficacy for the diffusion among all classes of a rational and rightly-grounded faith?

genius have executed the latter is better of being told in like manner, what the books are which prophets and apostles under the guidance of heavenly inspiration have written. It is by an

external evidence, that the knowledge of both sorts of productions is transmitted from generation to generation; but it is by an internal evidence that the disciples of each generation are formedwhether in the schools of art, or in the schools of religion. There is no overbearing of the human faculties, no prostration of mind to authority or to the mandates of an earthly superior-in either of the processes. All that authority does is, not to bid us believe; but to bid us attend and to point out the objects of attention. It is well that, in virtue of so many authentic collections, there is an external evidence by which we are enabled to point out rightly, what may be termed the canonical pictures of other days. And it is in every way as well, that, in virtue of so many Churches in Christendom, each in itself a vast repository of ecclesiastical documents, we have a most abundant external evidence-by which we are enabled to point out rightly the canonical, and to distinguish them from the apocryphal scriptures of other days. It is not, however, by force of the external but of the internal evidence, that the enamoured artist kindles into admiration of the great examples which are set before him.-Neither is it by force of the external but of the internal evidence, that the Christian peasant kindles into admiration, and his heart burns within him when the great examples and lessons of the sacred record are opened to his

view. Neither may have even so much as thought of the historical evidence, for the authenticity of the works studied by the one with the devoutness of an amateur; of the writings studied by the other with the devoutness of a religionist. Both may be genuine and well-founded disciples of their respective schools notwithstanding. And thus it is that our Bible, our well argued and well authenticated Bible, has proved an instrument for the solid education of millions who are strangers to every external argument on which the authenticity of the whole and of all its parts is vindicated. Of the outward credentials for the book they know nothing. They are the contents within the book, to which we stand indebted for all the faith, and that not a superstitious but an enlightened faith, that exists in Christendom. It is to the reading of the Bible that we owe this result-as put into the hands of children by the fathers of families; or circulated, under the auspices of its Church, among the people of a kingdom.

22. Before bringing this subject to a close, we would remark the verisimilitude that sits on the canonical scriptures, and constitutes a prima facie distinction between them, and all the other religious compositions of the age and country in which they were written we mean their freedom from a certain legendary character, and a certain untasteful extravagance, that is more or less to be detected in the Apocrypha; but which we think is most noticeable of all, when we make the transition from the Scriptures of the New Testament to the very earliest of the uncanonical writers on the side

of Christianity. Take for an example the epistle of Clement when he argues, or, at least, tries to illustrate the doctrine of a resurrection from the story of the phoenix. No one but must have felt the utter incongruity of such a passage, if thrust into the middle of any argument whatever in the New Testament, on the subject of the resurrection. Conceive it, for example, subjoined to the xvth chapter of 1st Corinthians, or to the ivth chapter of the second epistle; and what a motley juxtaposition would have been produced by it. And the contrast is not confined to particular passages; for, throughout and in general character, there is an obvious and sustained dissimilaritya sense and a dignity and an appropriateness in the one; and in the other, save when there is a copious intermixture of scripture quotation, or when the devoted piety breaks forth into an elevation and an earnestness which overshadows all the accompaniments, there is an extravagance and a weakness and a fanciful style both of illustration and argument, which makes us feel that we have got into the hands of very illiterate or very unpractised authors.

23. Now, to understand how this should be, we must consider that Christianity is responsible only for its own proper work on the affections and the principles of those, over whom it hath obtained a practical ascendancy. By means of certain great truths which it impresses on the belief and understanding of man, it exerts an influence upon his heart and upon his history; and the supreme love of God, along with the love of his neighbour,