exception to the condition of the mass. History too much consults our love of effect and pomp, to let us see in a close and distinct manner any thing

'On the low level of th' inglorious throng;' and our attention is borne away to the intellectual splendour exhibited among the most favoured aspirants of the seats of learning, or in councils, in courts, camps, and beroic and romantic enterprises, and in some immortal works of genius. And thus we are as if gazing with delight at a prodigious public bonfire, while, in all the cottages round, the people are shivering for want of fuel."-pp. 77-79.

Such was then the state of England, and but little better was its condition "at the middle, and down far beyond the middle of the last century ;" and the same might have yet been its situation, had not the system of means now in operation, sprung up, and had not God sent forth individuals, peculiarly qualified to scatter the thick darkness that brooded over the land.

Among these Mr. F., with an independence and candour that do him credit, gives the first place to Whitefield and Wesley:

"The means wanting to the former generations, and that have sprung into existence for the latter, may be briefly named.

There has been a vast extension of the system of preaching, by the classes of christians that arose under the influence of the happy innovation of Whitefield and Wesley, but especially by the followers of the latter; a connexion of christians which, (while many of us differ materially from their theological tenets, and while we may attribute to them some certain modicum too much of ambition in capacity of a religious body, combined with a good deal too much tendency to servility to power in capacity of citizens, also a small portion more than is defensively necessary of the Ishmaelitish quality,

as

toward other sects of dissenters, and some exemplification of the difficulty of perfectly combining temperance and zeal in religious feelings,) we must acknowledge to be doing incalculable good in the nation, more good probably than any other religious denomination. We may add, the progressive formation of a serious zealous evangelical ministry in the Established Church, and the rapid extension of the dissenting worship and teaching.

"These being things of directly religious operation, it perhaps might seem for a moment questionable whether they are more

than very partially to the purpose, in an enumeration of the agencies for banishing the ignorance of the community. But we hardly need to say, that true religion, be sides that it is knowledge, of the most important order, in whatever degree it occupies the understanding, is a marvellons improver of the sense of uneducated persons, by creating in them a habit of serious thought, which has in many instances been seen to have the effect of making them appear to have acquired, in the space of a very few years, double the measure of intellectual faculty they had ever shewn before.

"And then there have been the diversified causes and expedients, contributing to the increase of knowledge among the people in a mode less specifically directed to the religious effect. There was the grand novelty of Sunday Schools, which conferred immense benefit themselves, and encouraged instead of superseding the forma tion of other schools. There was a large production and circulation of tracts, which shewed how well entertainment might be made, by the proper hands, to subserve to moral and religious instruction without lessening its seriousness, and which will remain a monument of the talent, knowledge, and benevolence, of that distinguish ed benefactor of her country and age, Mrs. H. More, perhaps even pre-eminent above her many excellent works in a higher strain. Later issues of tracts, in different forms of composition, to the amount al most of an inundation, have solicited millions of thoughtless beings to begin to think. The enormous flight of periodical miscellanies, and of newspapers, must be taken as both the indication and the cause that hundreds of thousands of persons are giving some attention to the matters of general information, where their grandfathers were, during the intervals of time allowed by their employments, prating, brawling, sleeping, or drinking the hours away.

When we come down to a comparatively recent time, we see the Bible "going up on the breadth of the land;" schools, of a construction, devised as in rivalry of the multiplied forces in the finest mechanical inventions, in a hopeful progress toward general adoption; and an extensive practice, by the instrumentality of missionary and other benevolent institutions, of rendering familiar to common knowledge a great number of such interesting and important facts, in the state of other countries and our own, as would formerly have been far beyond the sphere of ordinary information.

The statement would be signally deficient, if we omitted to observe, that the prodigious commotion in the political world, during the third part of a century, has been a grand cause, in whatever proportion it may be judged that the atten

dant evil has balanced against the good, of any observable rising of the popular mind from its former stagnation. In all time there has not been a combination of events with principles that has, within so short a period, stirred to the very bottom the mind of so vast a portion of the race. The mighty spirit of the commotion has not only agitated men's passions and tempers, but through these, and with all the force of these, has reached their opinions.

"But reverting to the account of minor and more specific instrumentality, in our own country, we may add, that for a good many years past, there has been a most prolific inventiveness in making almost every sort of information offer itself in brief, familiar, and attractive forms, adapted to youth or to adult ignorance; so that knowledge, which was formerly a thing to be searched and dug for, "as for hid treasures," has seemed at last beginning to effloresce through the surface of the ground on all sides of us."-pp. 97-100.

Remarks like these merit particular attention in this age of exertion. From an exhibition of the consequences that have already followed the use of such means, those who are embarked in schemes of active benevolence are fairly authorized to take great courage. What has been done, is an evidence of what can be done. If the mighty machine,-and extended system of means, well concerted and effectually brought into action,has produced such effects in the earliest stages of its operation; what estimate of future results, the blessing of God still attending it, shall be deemed extravagant? Half the difficulty is already removed: those, who once stigmatized the benevolent plans of the age as quixotic and ranked their author with the adventurers of other days, have hid their faces in shame, and are now beginning to lend their own efforts in the great and good cause of enlightening and reforming mankind. A radical change in the intellectual and moral aspect of our race is fast advancing:

"But we think a great revolution is evidently beginning; a far more important one, by its higher principle and more expansive and beneficent consequences, than the ordinary events of that name. What have commonly been the matter and circumstance of revolutions? The last deciding blow in a deadly competition of

equally selfish parties; actions and re-actions of ambition and revenge; the fiat of a predominating potentate or conqueror; a burst of blind fury, suddenly sweeping away an old despotism, but overwhelming too, all attempts to substitute a better institution; plots, massacres, battles, dethronements, restorations: all ordinary things. How little of the sublime of moral agency has there been, with one or two partial exceptions, in these mighty commotions how little wisdom or virtue, or reference to the Supreme Patron of national interests; how little nobleness or even distinctness of purpose, or consolidated advantage of success! But here is a revolution with different phenomena. It displays its quality and project in activities, of continually enlarging scope and power, for the universal diffusion of the divine revelation; in enterprizes to attempt an opening of the doors of all the immense prison-houses of human spirits in every re. gion; in schemes, (advancing with a more quick and widening impulse into effect than good designs were wont to do in former times,) for rendering education and the possession of valuable knowledge universal; in multiply ing exertions, in all official and unofficial forms, for making it impossible to mankind to avoid hearing the voice of religion; and all this taking advantage of the new and powerful moveinent in the general mind; as earnest bold adventurers have sometimes availed themselves of a formidable torrent to be conveyed whither the stream in its accustomed state would never have carried them; or as we have heard of heroic assailants seizing the moment of an awful tempest of thunder and lightning, to break through the enemy's lines. These are the insignia by which it may well express disdain to take its rank with ordinary revolutions." -Pp. 242-244.

"It is a revolution in the manner of estimating the souls of the people, and consequently in the judgment of what should be done for their welfare. Through many ages, that immense multitude had been but obscurely presented to view in the character of rational improveable creatures. They were recognized but as one large mass, of equivocal moral substance, but faintly distinguishable into individu. als; a breadth of insignificant sameness, undiscernible in marked features and aspects of mental character; existing, and to be left to exist, in their own manner; and that manner hardly worth concern or

inquiry. Little consideration could there be of how much spiritual immortal essence might be going to waste, while this multitude was reduced to this kind of collective nothingness on the field of contemplation, But now it is as if a mist were rising and dispersing from that field, and leaving this mighty assemblage of spiritual beings ex

hibited to view in such a light from heaven as they were never beheld in before, except by the eyes of Apostles, and of a small number that in every age bave resembled them."—p. 253.

"It may be added, that the great ma jority of those who are intent on the schemes for enlightening and reforming mankind, are entertaining a confident hope of the approach of a period when the success will be far greater in proportion to the measure of exertion, in every department of the system of instrumentality for that grand object. We cherish this confidence, not on the strength of any pretention to be able to resolve prophetic emblems and numbers into precise dates and events of the present and approaching times. We rest it on a much more general mode of combining the very extraordinary indications of the period we live in, with the substantial purport of the divine predictions. There unquestionably gleams forth, through the plainer lines and through the mystical imagery of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which the application of the truths of religion to men's minds will be irresistible. And what should more naturally be interpreted as one of the dawning signs of its approach, than a sudden wide movement at once to clear their intellects and bring the beavenly light to shine close upon them; ac companied by a prodigious breaking up in the old system of the world, which hardly recognized in the inferior millions the very existence of souls to need such an illumination?

"The labourers in the institutions for

instructing the young descendants of those millions, may often regret to perceive how little the process is as yet informed with the energy which is thus to pervade the world. But let them regard as one great undivided economy and train of operation, these initiatory efforts and all that is to follow, till that time" when all shall know the Lord;" and take by anticipation, as in fraternity with the happier future labourers, their just share of that ultimate triumph. Those active spirits, in the happier stages, will look back with this sentiment of kindred, and complacency to those, who sustained the earlier toils of the good cause."—pp. 281, 282.

Mr. F. gives a melancholy account of the degraded state of domestic life, where gross ignorance prevails. The picture is not however too highly drawn ; but accords entirely with what most persons of observation have in fact witnessed in low and ignorant families, even in this country. The passage deserves to be attentively perused:

"How many families we have seen where the parents were only the older and stronger animals than their children, whom they could teach nothing but the methods and tasks of labour. They naturally could not be the mere companions, for alternate play and quarrel, of their children, and were disqualified by mental rudeness to be their respected guardians. Here were about them these young and rising forms, containing the inextinguishable principle, which was capable of enter ing on an endless progression of wisdom, goodness, and happiness; needing num berless suggestions, explanations, admonitions, and brief reasonings, and a training to follow the thoughts of written instruction. But nothing of all this from the parental mind. Their case was as hopeless for receiving this benefit, as the condition, for physical nutriment, of infants attempting to draw it, (we have heard of so affecting and mournful a fact,) from the breast of a dead parent. These unhappy heads of families possessed no resources for engaging and occupying, for at once amusing and instructing, the younger minds; no descriptions of the most wonderful objects, or narratives of the most memo rable events, to set, for superior attraction, against the idle stories of the neighbourhood; no assemblage of admirable examples, from the sacred or other records of human character, to give a beautiful real form to virtue and religion, and promote an aversion to base companionship.

Requirement and prohibition must be a part of the family economy, perpetually in operation of course; and in such examples we have seen the family government exercised, or attempted to be exercised, in the roughest barest shape of will and menace, with no aptitude or means of imparting to injunction and censure a convincing and persuasive quality. Not that the seniors should allow their gov. ernment to be placed on such a ground, that, in every thing they enforce or forbid, they may be liable to have their reasons demanded by the children. Far from it; but at the same time, it should not be obvious to the natural shrewdness of the children that their domestic authorities really have no reasons better than obstinate or capricious will, so that they should plainly perceive there is no reason for their submission but the necessity imposed by their dependence. But this must often be the unfortunate case in such families.

"Now imagine a week, month, or year, of the intercourse in such a domestic society, the course of talk, the mutual manners, and the progress of mind and character; where there is a sense of drudgery approaching to that of slavery, in the unrelenting necessity of labour; where there is none of the interest of imparting knowl

ceive any obscurity, as religious truth, especially if it come from those who profess to teach, he has the following observations:

"Where is the wonder, that crudeness of conception should not disappoint and offend minds that have not, ten times since they came into the world, been compelled to form two ideas with precision, and then combine them with strictness, beyond the narrow scope of their ordinary pursuits? Where is the wonder, if many such persons take noise and fustian, for something zealous and something lofty; if they mistake a wheedling cant for affectionate solicitude; if they defer to pompous egotism and dogmatical assertion, from the obvious interest, which those who cannot inquire much for themselves, have to believe their teacher is an oracle; if they are delighted with whimsical conceits as strokes of discovery and surprise, and yet at the same time are pleased with commonplace, and endless repetition, as an exemption from mental effort; and if they are gratified by vulgarity of diction and illustration, as bringing religion to the level where they are at home? Nay, if an artful pretender, or half lunatic visionary, or some poor set of dupes of their own inflated self-importance, should give out, that they are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the numberless devout and sagacious examiners of it, what is there in the minds of the most ignorant class of the persons desircus to secure the benefits of religion, that can be relied on to certify them, that they shall not forego the greatest blessing ever offered to them by setting at nought these preten

sions?

"It is grievous to think there should be a large and almost perpetual stream of words, conveying crudities, extravagances, arrogant dictates of ignorance, pompous nothings, vulgarities, catches of idle fantasy, and impertinences of the speak

er's vanity, as religious instruction, to as

semblages of ignorant people. But then, how to turn this current away, to waste itself, as it deserves, in the swamps of the solitary desert? The thing to be wished is, that it were possible to put some strong coercion on the minds, (we deprecate all other restraint,) of the teachers, a compulsion to feel the necessity of information, sense, disciplined thinking, the correct use of words, and the avoidance at once of soporific formality and wild excess. There are signs of amendment, certainly; but while the passion of human beings for notoriety lasts, (which will be yet a considerable time,) there will not fail to be

men, in any number required, ready to exhibit in religion, in any manner in which the people are willing to be pleased with them. The effectual method will

be, to take the matter in the inverted order, and endeavour to secure that those who assemble to be taught, shall already have learnt so much by other means, as to impose upon their teachers the necessity of wisdom. But by what other means, except the discipline of the best education possible to be given to them, and the subsequent voluntary self-improvement to which it may be hoped that such an education would often lead?

"We cannot dismiss this topic, of the unhappy effect of extreme ignorance on persons religiously disposed, in rendering them both liable and inclined to receive their ideas of the highest subject in a disorderly, perverted, and debased form, mixed largely with other men's folly and their own, without again remarking a pleasing testimony to the connexion between genuine religion and intelligence. It arises from the fact, apparent to any discriminating observer, that, as a general rule, the most truly pious of the illiterate disciples of religion, those who have the most of its devotional feeling, do certainly manifest more of the operation of judgment in their religion than is evinced by those of less solemn and devout sentiment. The former will unquestionably be found, when on a level as to the measure of natural faculty and the want of previous cultivation, to shew more discernment, to be less captivated by noise and extravagance, and more intent on really understanding what it is that they profess to believe and love."-pp. 222–225.

We were much interested in the remarks respecting the obligations under which governments are placed to devote the power deposited with them, to the purpose of disseminating intelligence among their subjects. It is in this way that they can most effectually secure the permanent wellbeing of the people, which is professedly the grand object always in view. But it is a most melancholy thought that the diffusion of any, especially christian knowledge, is usually treated with indifference, if not with contempt.

"If a serious and religious man, looking back through one or two centuries, were enabled to take, with an adequate comprehension of intellect, the sum and value of so much of the astonishing course of the national exertions of this country, as the