nished cellar, long bills for fruit and horse-hire," and even "bills unpaid," (for that is hinted at by Rusticus); will these things qualify a student for the sacred employment of the ministry? Or will they not have the most direct tendency to destroy the "good seed" sown in the beart; to unfit the mind for devotional exercises, and to create a distaste for the ministerial duties?

It has been often lamented, that without waiting to witness the disposition of mind, without regarding how far the requisites to form a true minister of the Gospel of Christ may or may not be possessed, young men are so frequently designed by parents and guardians for "the Church;" as though it were, like other professions, to be entered at pleasure, and only considered as a mean of livelihood! It has often, too, been lamented, that while at college, those who are intended for

the ministry do not receive, exclusively and separate from others, an education peculiarly fitting them for their sacred profession. Indeed, from the first moment of a boy's being dedicated to the Church, I cannot but think it a great desideratum, that throughout the whole of his education, his future calling should never be lost sight of; and if I am so happy as to accord in sentiment with you, I should rejoice to see, at your recommendation, many of our excellent clergy opening seminaries, expressly for the purpose of educating youths, previous to their admission at college, who are designed one day to fill the pulpits in our venerable Establishment. It is thus, I think, that the desirable purposes and wishes of Rusticus, will be best fulfilled, and "the Establishment" be prevented from losing "many valuable servants." I am, &c. E.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. Ir can reflect no peculiar credit on a single obscure individual, to echo the universal sentiment of praise and admiration which, I doubt not, has long since burst from all your readers, on the perusal of your invaluable papers upon the subject of Education. I esteem it a very high encomium to say, what I nevertheless believe to be true, that the pages of the Christian Observer have acquired fresh interest, and a new lustre, in the eyes of all well-judging men, from the pen of your excellent and able correspondent, the author of those papers. He has entitled you, Mr. Editor, to the attention of posterity, in a new and a two-fold light. On their respect, indeed, I always considered you as laying a just claim; and to that your correspondent has now added the most CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 146.

His

unquestioned and interesting right to their gratitude and esteem. profound knowledge and actual experience on the important subject of the education of youth; his enlarged views of those general principles on which alone it can be properly conducted; his easy arrangement of complicated matter, and the apt perspicuity of his style, must be points familiar to the observation of his most ordinary readers: and for the benefit already derived from labours, of which I would fain, as yet, not see the conclusion, as a humble individual somewhat interested in the subject, I desire to render your correspondent my most unfeigned thanks.

With these truly unaffected sentiments of respect and gratitude to the writer of the papers in question, I hope it may not be deemed incon

M

"istent to express my dissent on the subject of one single opinion advanced in them; an opinion, I own, of considerable importance, and on which I should be most happy to invite a discussion in your pages, far more satisfactory than any which my humble pen can hope to compass. The opinion I allude to is that given in your Number for Noember last, p. 701, on the subject of EMULATION. I am conscious that at the very mention of the word Emulation, a thousand feelings will start into the breasts of your readers, perhaps as various and discordant as the ideas usually affixed to that name. Should I boldly at once aver my intention of defending the principle, 1 scarcely dare open my eyes or my recollection to the vast host that cometh out against me in such a cause. The names of Mr. Law, Mr. Gisborne, Mr. Wilberforce, would, even without any further search, be sufficient to strike dumb the bravest disputant; and when to their verdict I add the peremptory denunciation of your able correspondent already referred to, I can be proud of nothing but my fool-hardiness in making such an attempt. Such, therefore, as it may be, I desire to implicate no one with me in the charge of temerity. Most distinctly I trust you will assure your readers, Mr.Editor, that you are not personally responsible for sentiments broached in your pages with the evident view, not of settling, but investigating the truth. Of your correspondent I will only ask the candid attention which he is so well instructed how to pay to suggestions even in their most youthful and unripe forms; together with the permission, on my part, without defining very accurately what we mean by emulation in the first instance, rather to take his own statement of the whole subject, and to enter at once upon some difficulties in his system which have struck my mind very forcibly, upon viewing it simply as it stands.

In the first place then, sir, there are two thundering consequences

which must necessarily present themselves to the attentive mind from the position of your correspondent. The first is, that a principle-not a modification of one, but an actual principle-exists in the mind, owing its creation to some other power than God, and to be absolutely eradicated and annihilated by his grace. That such a principle as the love of eminence, the love of excellence-call it the love of excelling others, of rising superior to others-exists in the mind, and is a distinct feeling or affection of it as different from others as the principle of fear, for instance, is from that of hope, can admit of no question. It is not a mere modification of other principles; it is a principle itself, and has an independent exercise sufficiently discernible and peculiar to itself. Now it is not necessary to inquire how far the evil power has the means of creation in his hands. It is conceivable at least that he has not; and that to create an evil principle in the mind, would be as far beyond his allowed limits of mischief, as to create for the purposes of evil, a solid particle of matter. But the question does not hinge here. The point of fact would be generally conceded, and I apprehend to be incontrovertibly true, that no principle has been so engendered in the mind of man, and that our lamentable and hereditary taint consists entirely in the perversion, the excess, or the misuse of principles pre-existing in the mind, and is to be cured, not by their expulsion, but their regulation. "What! regulate robbery, murder, and adultery!" I think I hear your correspondent exclaiming. Yes, I answer: regulate, not those individual exereises of the passions which are but their abuse, their deformity, and their adaptation to the standard of darkness; but regulate the principles, the divinely-created, necessary, and still perfectible principles, from whence those actions, through perversion, proceed. Regulate these and you will change their offsprin

smiles.

It is not the place, at present, to say, how any given passion, such as hatred or love, may be regulated and refined and sanctified in its exercise, any more than to shew how the parent-principle of a devilish ambition may be converted into an honest emulation. This hereafter. It is only now to be asked your correspondent, whether he is ready to discard any one known and connatural principle of the mind wholly from use, because it has been abused; whether emulation, in some shape or other, be not such a principle; and whether, therefore, he is prepared to meet a consequence for which he will find no parallel, by forbidding every exercise of this one affection of the mind, which, if originally created there by God, would seem, as such, no less capable of a beneficial modification than others? The apparent total proscription of this principle in Scriptore will come better under discussion when we speak of its different varieties.

The next ill-favoured consequence which meets us from the position of your correspondent, is

the radical error which it charges upon all mankind, and even the most virtuous and best judging amongst them; nay, the actual guilt in which it necessarily involves almost every system, both theoretical and practical, which has ever been devised or executed for the improvement of the race. Of course, we give up the whole heathen world at a stroke. Soame Jenyns has proved their primary virtue, patriotism, perhaps one of the fairest public fruits of emulation, of no account in the Christian scale. And Cicero, the most attractive and unexceptionable specimen amongst them of the effects of emulation in the individual character, perhaps we must allow, holds scarcely an inch of ground in common with the Christian moralist. But turn to the world of Christians, and the matter is scarcely mended. Almost all the excellence, whether intellectual or, we might even say, moral, which has been attained amongst Christians, is, in a great majority of instances, to be traced to the source of emulation. We do not say from what it ought to have arisen, or how far the latter species of excellence, if so derived, should be called immoral, or not; but such, in point of fact, has been the derivation.Let reason judge, where, but for this almost universal principle of action, would have been our statesmen, our philosophers, our metaphysicians, our poets, and even our divines. What person, at all acquainted with the nature and the mixture of human motives, will not, in point of fact, attribute, at least in part, to the operation of this principle the labours of a Baxter as well as a Clarke, a Henry as well as a Grotius, an Austin as well as an Erasmus, a Chrysostom as well as an Origen. Call it mixture, or call it alloy, can any one, conversant in human nature, doubt the presence of something like the principle of emulation in the production, we may say, of almost all those immortal labours which grac

the names above-mentioned? The principle, in as far as it exists at all, we question not to be precisely analogous to the feeling which your correspondent condemns in children. And the same condemnation "which he bestows in one case, must as strictly and universally hold in the other. Nor is the depth of the condemnation less formidable than

the extent of it. It would prove, upon every one of those venerable names just mentioned, as well as upon almost all that on any other account are handed down in the page of history, the possession and encouragement of a principle in their minds primarily and purely evil. Their very fame, the very sense of approbation excited in the breast of others at the mention of their names, and which it is impossible not to imagine, in by far the greatest majority of instances, operated as a stimulus on their minds, as it does on the minds of their admirers, is ipso facto evidence against them. No excuse, no palliation, can be offered of their guilt. The application of such appellatives as an honest emulation, a love of excellence, (which includes in its very name the idea of excelling others), a proper regard to reputation, an aspiring mind directed to good objects, a disinterested ambition, must involve an actual contradiction in terms. Nay, those persons who have in any degree contributed first to excite, and then to use such a principle, in the minds of children more especially, are to be esteemed as amongst the worst enemies of the human race, the actual allies of the great founder of evil. Bell and Lancaster are, indeed, proscribed, and consistently so, by name in your correspond. ent's essay; and so far from encouragement, assuredly, under his view, they cannot deserve toleration; and the subscriber to the schools of either is a partaker in their evil deeds. It need not be said to how many educators of youth, and their system, this broad note of condemnation must equally apply; and even the

worthy and respected Missionary, Mr. John, Senior of the Danish Mission at Tranquebar, must come in for his share of the sentence, for having proposed, upon a mistaken view of its excellence, the transplantation and culture of this very principle across the Atlantic, in native free schools, throughout the whole of our Indian possessions.

In the investigation of truth, exaggeration can only defeat its own object. If, therefore, the above statements at all wear that complexion, let it be attributed, as in reality it must be owing, only to the nature of that position of which the question is made. The position contains no qualification on the part of your correspondent. I cannot, therefore, see what qualifications or limitations can be adopted in the conclusions to which it necessarily tends; and I am far, sir, from wishing to heap together, in the first instance, arguments only to prejudice, and appeals to consequences, the most slippery of all modes of reasoning. On this account, I forbear to insist on another very considerable difficulty attending the posi tion in question, viz. the impossibility of finding any other principle to substitute for emulation, which shall operate either so universally or so strongly. Constituted as the species now are, and as every indivi dual of that species now is, your correspondent would surely not suspend all operations both in the moral, intellectual, political, and every other world, till he shall have found such a substitute; or, refer ring to the only pure motive, on his principles-the love of God-by what process will he render that a motive sufficiently extensive in the multitude, or powerful in the individual, to produce all those effects,both in education and in after-life, which are so necessary for our very existence and daily sustentation?

To come, then, to some more di rect observations upon this principle of emulation; I confess with less confidence than in declaring the

consequences of entirely proscribing this principle from the human mind; I proceed to some considerations for the defence, though at the same time regulation, of it. It is to be recollected, that nothing is more difficult in all cases than to draw lines in moral conduct and moral principles and as he takes the least trouble who dries up the element in dispute and annihilates it from existence, so he, perhaps, is most entitled to candid construction who attempts, if he does not presumptuously attempt, the more godlike task -of directing it. "Hitherto thou shalt go, and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

I would begin then, sir, by humbly asking, if the term emulation be sufficiently understood. It saves an infinity of trouble to define our terms; and it is a great question whether this very subject has not been beyond measure embarrassed for want of definition. Imitation, says your excellent correspondent, is a very good thing, but emulation a very bad one. We may follow examples, dead or alive, but we must not be guilty of teaching our children emulation. Mr. Gisborne, to whose eloquent pages an appropriate reference is made, says nearly the same thing. At least he condemns the principle of emulation as highly dangerous, if not actually sinful, in itself; but admits and prescribes the principle of following example. Now, it is not very clear whether the distinction here intended, is, that we may attempt to equal other persons, but not to surpass them; or something else, yet to be explained. If the former, the question is made at once a question of degree; according to which we may lawfully aspire to a certain point, but not beyond it. But, in this case, what becomes of emulation as a principle radically bad; or how is that actually sinful, and fit only to be eradicated from the mind, which, after all, to a certain degree, comes to be prescribed as a legitimate means of improvement? Besides,

this distinction is, according to Johnson at least, without a difference; for, looking into his dictionary, we find "to emulate" is "to rival,”« to imitate, with hope of equality, or superior excellence." We must, therefore, suppose, that some other distinction is intended between emulation and bare imitation. Something must be supposed, in the dispositions attending the two acts; sp different from each other as to erect one of them into a virtuous or at least desirable, the other into a pernicious and guilty propensity. And that this distinction is intended by your correspondent is pretty clear, when he tells us, that imitation must be so conducted as not to run foul of certain bad dispositions, of which emulation is one; and on the other hand, that emulation is in itself an evil utterly intolerable on account of a certain vice of the mind which ever accompanies it, or rather which it is; for "emulation," says he, "is a desire of surpassing others for the sake of superiority;" that is to say, it is pride. Here, then, it is true, such as it is, we have a definition of emulation; and who, admitting for a moment the justice of the definition, could for another moment attempt the defence of the passion? But suppose we inquire if this be a fair definition; and whether it might not be as just to say of the other and more favoured principle of action, that "imitation is a desire of resembling others, for the sake of similitude?" Under such a definition of this latter act, who would not equally rise up in arms against it, as pos sessing the most dangerous qualities, and leading to the very worst consequences in a world which, to resemble, is to follow it to ruin? And the answer which its advocates will most readily adopt is simply this, that imitation is indeed a de sire of resembling others, but not for the sake of similitude merelywhich would be at the best like a monkey-but for the sake of some supposed excellence in the exam