gest to those beloved brethren, here and elsewhere, who have enjoyed the advantage of being trained to the ministry in the lecture room in Warren-street. Than the anxious prospective regard which it reveals in the mind of their never to be forgotten instructer and guide. nothing can be more touching. And if their be any of them so unhappy, as to have fatally verified the deep apprehensions which then shook his breast, now is the time-not to lend their aid in banishing from the community whatever remains of that truth which is necessary to recover us to peace and usefulness, but to render it the submission of their consciences, and to see that their hearts follow promptly in its adoption, and that it be immediately acted out in their conduct, and signalize their lives :-and in short, to fly to all those divine resources which are laid up for our safety and support, amidst the corruptions of nature, and the temptations of the world, that they may be enabled to hold up their heads in the presence of the Master when they stand before him as their Judge.

Without venturing at present any further demand upon your pages, I remain, Mr. Editor,

New-York, August 9th, 1822.

Your's respectfully,

ECCLESIASTICUS.

STICI

CITY AFFAIRS.-THE LOCAL SYSTEM.

(Concluded from page 206.)

AND here it may be remarked of a local school, that it possesses a peculiar advantage over a general school, in the attraction which it holds out to all sorts of families. It lies either within its own little district, or in its own immediate vicinity; and, separated only by a few houses from each dwelling place, the whole line of distance which is described by each of the scholars from his home, can, both in going and returning, be easily followed or overseen by his parents. Thus will there be no corruption to meet him on his path, and no possibility, between the parent and the teacher, to evade the attendance of a single evening, on any excursion of vice or idleness. The shield and the security of domestic guardianship are thus thrown over the system; and even the children of the religious and irreligious mingle together only under the eye of their teacher, and may be separated instantaneously, at the breaking up of the juvenile congregation. They mix only at the season when the example and proficiency of the good have a predominating influence over the depraved and the careless; and passing, in a single moment, from the eye of the teacher to the eye of the parent, there is no time for the influence of the depraved to assume its natural ascendancy. Through a Sabbath school, as through a conduit, the spirit and character of the better families may send a moralizing influence upon the others; while, in their passage to and from the schools, all the guards of parental jealousy might be put forth, to intercept the stream that else might flow in an opposite direction. It is thus that the presence and the exertions of a Sabbath teacher may bring about just such a composition of the families as to give scope for the assimilating power of every good ingredient, and,

at the same time to check the assimilating power of every bad one. He may hasten, inconceivably, the fermentation of that leaven, by the working of which it is that we are taught to expect, at length, the spread of Christianity throughout the whole population. Nor are we aware of a single office, within the regular limits of any ecclesiastical constitution, from the pious and faithful discharge of whose duties so signal a blessing may be anticipated, both for the present and for future generations.

We are glad, however, that so much has been said, in Scotland, about the invasion of the Sabbath school system on family religion. It will have a salutary reaction both on teacher and parents, and make all who are religiously disposed be careful, lest so interesting a vestige of the Christianity of other days should be any further defaced or trampled upon, by an institution, the design of which is to restore our population to all that was pious, and venerable, and affecting, in the style and habit of the olden time. And there is one thing that may be said to those who urge this objection most vehemently. In so doing they give up the principle of the former objection. By admitting the competency of parents to teach Christianity to their children, they admit that part of this work, at least, may be confided to other hands than those of regular and ordained clergy. They admit that a father, in humble life, may be the instrument of transmitting Christian wisdom and Christian worth to his own children; and that though it were quackery for each parent to undertake the cure of family diseases, it is not quackery for each to undertake the work of family instruction. Thus the comparison between the efforts of the unlicensed in theology and medicine is by them at least, practically given up. We hold this to be a signal testimony, and from the mouths of adversaries too, to the power of unlettered Christianity, in propagating its own likeness throughout the young of our rising generation, a power which most assuredly would not all go into dissipation, though, for a short time every Sabbath evening, it were transported from its place in the family, to a new place in such a seminary of religious instruction as we have attempted to advocate.

And there is one point of superiority which a Sabbath teacher, humble in circumstances, has over one who is much and visibly raised above the level of the families among whom he labours. It is true that the latter has an advantage, in the mere ascendency of rank, and in that peculiar homage which the very exhibition of piety, when conjoined with affluence, is ever sure to draw from the multitude. But the former has his compensation in the more unmixed influence of his ministrations. His presence awakens no sordid or mercenary expectation among the poor. The welcome he gets from them is altogether disinterested; and, as we have already attempted to evince, in the proportion that the acceptance of a religious visit is untainted, in respect of its character, is the visit itself unimpaired in respect of its practical efficacy. To us the purity of the ministration appears indispensable to the power of it: and it is to him, who is the bearer of Christianity and nothing else, among the habitations of

the common people, that we would look for the most ready and rapid diffusion of its principles. This is a circumstance which goes far to counteract any loss that may be conceived to arise from the defect of a more regular or refined scholarship. Let there be sincere piety united with plain but good intelligence, and we would have no scruple, but on the contrary, in employing, as Sabbath teachers, men from the very humblest classes of life. The weight of an exalted character will ever carry it over the want of an exalted condition: and it is, indeed, a striking testimony to the worth and importance of the poor, that among them the best capabilities are to be found for transforming a corrupt into a pure and virtuous community.

This holds out a very brilliant moral perspective to the eye of a philanthropist. In a few years, many of the scholars at our present seminaries will be convertible into the teachers of a future generation. There will be indefinite additions made to our religious agency. Instead of having to assail, as now, the general bulk of the population, by a Christian influence from without, the mass itself will be penetrated, and, through the means of residing and most effective teachers, there will be kept up a busy process of internal circulation. It is thus that he who can patiently work at small things, and be contented to wait for great things, lends by far the best contribution to the mighty achievement of regenerating our land. Extremes meet; and the sanguine philanthropist, who is goaded on by his impatience to try all things, and look for some great and immediate result, will soon be plunged into the despair of ever being able to do any thing at all. The man who can calmly set himself down to the work of a district school, and there be satisfied to live and to labour without a name, may germinate a moral influence that will, at length, overspread the whole city of his habitation. It is rash to affirm of the local system that it is totally impracticable in London; while most natural, at the same time, that it should appear so to those who think nothing worthy of an attempt, unless it can be done per saltum,-unless it at once fills the eye with the glare of magnificence, and it can be invested, at the very outset, with all the pomp and patronage of extensive committeeship. A single lane, or court, in London, is surely not more impracticable than in other towns of this empire. There is one man to be found there, who can assume it as his locality, and acquit himself thoroughly and well of the duties which it lays upon him. There is another who can pitch beside him, on a contiguous settlement, and, without feeling bound to speculate for the whole metropolis, can pervade, and do much to purify his assumed portion of it. There is a third, who will find that a walk so unnoticed and obscure is the best suited to his modesty; and a fourth, who will be eager to reap, on the same field, that reward of kind and simple gratitude, in which his heart is most fitted to rejoice. We are sure that this piecemeal operation will not stop for want of labourers ; though it may be arrested, for awhile, through the eye of labourers being seduced by the meteoric glare of other enterprises, alike impotent and imposing. So long as each man of mediocrity conceives

himself to be a man of might, and sighs after some scene of enlargement that may be adequate to his fancied powers, little or nothing will be done; but so soon as the sweeping and sublime imagination is dissipated, and he can stoop to the drudgery of his small allotment in the field of usefulness, then will it be found, how it is by the summation of many humble mediocrities, that a mighty result is at length arrived at. It was by successive strokes of the pickaxe and the chisel that the pyramids of Egypt were reared and great must be the company of workmen, and limited the task which each must occupy, ere they will be made to ascend the edifice of a nation's worth, or of a nation's true greatness.

In this laborious process of nursing an empire to Christianity, we know not at present, a readier and more available apparatus of means than that which has been raised by methodism. In every large town of England, it owns a number of disciples, and, through a skilful mechanism that has long been in operation, there is a minute acquaintance, on the part of their leaders, with the talents and character of each of them. Why should not they avail themselves of their existing facilities for the adoption of this system, and so thoroughly pervade that population by their Sabbath schools which they only, as yet, have partially drawn to their pulpits? It would be doing more, in the long run, to renovate and multiply the chapels of methodism, than all that has as yet been devised by them: and thus might they both extend religious education among the young, and a churchgoing habit throughout the general population. We doubt not that, with this new style of tactics, they would mightily alarm the establishment. But so much the better. This is just the salutary applica tion which the establishment stands in need of. And from all that we have learned of the catholic and liberal spirit of this class of dissenters, we guess that, though they did no more than simply stimulate the Church of England to do the whole work, and to do it aright, they would bless God and rejoice.

Such is the good will we bear to sectarians, that we should rejoice in nothing more than to behold their instantaneous adoption of an expedient which, we honestly believe, would add tenfold to their. resources and their influence. Let them operate in large towns, on the principle of locality. Let them enter on the territorial possession of this peopled wilderness. Let them erect as many district schools and district chapels as they find that they have room for; and if the establishment will not be roused by this manifold activity, out of its lethargies, then sectarianism will, at length, earn, and most rightfully earn, all the honours and all the ascendency of an establishment. It is, indeed, a most likely thing that the Church would be put into motion; and this, of itself, were an important good rendered to the country, by the industry and zeal of dissenters. But when we look to the fearful deficiency of our ecclesiastical system, there is no fear lest all the galley-boats of sectarianism, with the slow and ponderous establishment in tow, will too soon overtake the mighty extent of our yet unprovided population. Nor do we know of any common VOL. IX.

30

enterprise that would promise fairer, at length, for embodying the the Church and the dissenters together, by some such act of comprehensive union, as has lately reflected so much honour on the two most numerous classes of dissenters in our country.

For the Christian Herald.

BENIFIT OF SABBATH SCHOOLS.

THE following statements were made by the Rev. W. Goodell, Missionary to Palestine, to the "Visiting Committee" of the Sunday School, in this city. By giving them a place you will oblige A SUBSCRIBER.

In the account of a revival in the State of New-York, it is stated, that of thirty tive persons, who were hopeful sharers in the work, twenty-seven belonged to the Sabbath schools in that place. Of one hundred persons, who united with a church in the course of a single year, ninety-eight had enjoyed the blessings of Sabbath school instruction. It is said, that of the Missionaries, who have gone from Great Britain to the heathen, nineteen twentieths became pious at the Sabbath schools. And that of the orthodox ministers in England, who are under forty years of age, more than two thirds became pious at the Sabbath schools. Henderson and Patterson, who have done such wounders on the Continent in regard to the Bible cause, it is said, received their first religious impressions at Sabbath schools. The celebrated Dr. Morrison, Missionary in the vast empire of China, who has recently translated the whole Bible into Chinese, a language spoken by the largest associated population on the globe-became pious at a Sabbath school! O! who can tell, how many Brainerds, and Buchanans, and Morrisons, and Martyns, and Harriet Newells, and Isabella Grahams, God is training in these schools, to become the blessed instruments of renovating the world!!

MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL.

No men in the world are under such obligations to do good as the Ministers of the Gospel. They who are "men of God" should always be at work for God. Certainly they who are dedicated to the special services of the Lord, should never be satisfied, but when they are in the most sensible manner serving him. Certainly, they whom the great King has brought nearer to himself than other men, should be more unwearied than others in endeavouring to advance his kingdom. They whom the word of God calls angels, ought certainly to be of an angelic disposition; always disposed to do good, like the good angels; "ministers ever on the wing to do his pleasure." It is no improper proposal, that they would seriously set themselves to think, "What are the points wherein I should be wise and do good, like an angel of God?" Or," if an angel were in the flesh, as I am, and in such a post as mine, what methods may I justly imagine that he would use to glorify God? What wonderful offices of kindness would