to read and write, just as well as learn a trade or be instructed in any one of the arts or sciences of human life, even though religion make no immediate part of the system. Religious instruction makes no part of the lawyer's education for the bar, or the physicians for the medical profession, yet surely it would not be just to infer from thence, that it was in such cases altogether neglected, or that such a system was antiscriptural, improper, or dangerous. Perhaps it might be better, indeed, if religion were made the groundwork of all, but surely no wise man would stop such instruction altogether, because it was not.

Another consideration which leads me to adopt the opinions I have now endeavoured to explain, is this, and I believe it is one which the experience of others will almost universally confirm ; that by far the greater number of instances in which a sound conversion from antiscriptural error to scriptural truth has latterly taken place in this country, have been the results of an education totally unconnected with Scriptural reading and instruction. Such education did not of itself, indeed, produce any saving fruit, but afterwards when divine truth-thereby placed within reach--was brought to bear upon the mind thus opened to receive its light, in many cases, to my own knowledge, the bubble of superstitious credulity gradually burst, and real faith, "the faith of the operation of God," grew up in its place. This seems to me, then, to be the voice of experience speaking loudly in the ear of common sense. In such cases, at least, the most happy effects followed the most unpromising means, and why might not the result be the same in numberless others, were the same method pursued? I verily believe were all the lower classes of our land able to read, and think, and examine for themselves, the influence and effect of divine truth upon them would be ten fold what it is at present.

Reading and writing I look upon in short to be those natural and proper means, in the use of which, when rightly directed, sound knowledge of every kind is to be obtained: they are the moral implements, with which man, as a rational creature, is to work at the mine of wisdom; and thus they are also the foundation on which an enlightened edifice of religious as well as other truth is to be built. I regard them in this point of view then, simply, as but the due cultivation of those faculties with which God has endowed his human creatures the improvement of those powers which he has given us, I may be allowed to say, independent of our religious constitution and character. Considering man, therefore, merely as an inhabitant of this present world, I am of opinion he ought to be taught both to read and write, if it were only that he may be fitted to discharge its duties intelligently and uprightly; and I am of opinion, also, that were this universally the state of our population, the ill effects of education which are in some instances felt by raising a few above the level of others in their rank and station of life, would be done greatly away. Unsanctified knowledge must, indeed, always be attended with danger to fallen man, but cannot, I think, be worse or more dangerous than unsanctified ignorance:

it is, I am sure, not near so hopeless. I do not think there is any state, in which man is so likely to remain unacquainted with God, and unconvinced of sin, as a state of ignorance. Knowledge, if it does no more, gives a wider view of duty and responsibility, and thus often becomes a handmaid to true religion.

I am very far from saying, however, with the friends of infidelity, that religion is altogether or only a matter between a man and his God, and therefore that every man should be left to himself to do just as he pleases with regard to it. All I say is, that under the present peculiar circumstances of Ireland, ignorance seems to be the great impediment to the moral and religious improvement of the people in every point of view, and therefore, that they should at least be educated so far as to read and write, in order that the blessings which civil and religious liberty present to them, may be fairly within their reach, which in their present state is not the case. Give them, I would also say, a moral and unprejudiced, if not a religious education, and you will deliver them from one of a much more baneful description which they are likely at present to receive, and at the same time, endear yourselves to them as friends and benefactors, to whose kindness they will owe one of the greatest temporal blessings that a rational being can receive the cultivation of his mind and moral powers, as well as the fairest path to religious intelligence and knowledge.

Did I conceive that in this there was any dereliction of duty, or that it proceeded from any real want of faith in the use of the legitimate means of Christian enlightenment, I should be the last person in the world to recommend or adopt it. I do not, however, as yet at least, see it to be contrary to the letter or spirit of God's holy word, and I cannot but think it would prove highly beneficial to the present advantage of many immortal souls, who are otherwise, I fear, beyond the reach of our assistance. It is, at all events, a subject well deserving the most serious attention. I do not say it is a matter in which the ministers of the gospel, or perhaps the most decidedly religious characters are called upon to come prominently forward: but were those on whom an awful responsibility rests, the landed proprietors of Ireland, to say generally-We are not teachers of religion, it is true, but we see our poor people around us sunk in moral and mental degradation: they do not understand our religious views, and therefore they will receive no religious knowledge at our hands. We will, however, give them what they will receive, and try at least to make them rational and self-judging agents: we will improve their minds, and give them correct ideas of honesty, sobriety self-respect, and moral duty. Were they, say, to join together upon such principles, and form a society for such a purpose, not but think that without lowering the standard of religion, or lessening the awful importance of divine truth, they would be discharging a most important duty, of which, I must say, I think the landed proprietors of Ireland for the most part are at present fearfully negligent.

I can

Simple education in reading, writing, and arithmetic will not in

deed, bring souls to God; but neither will it be found, I think, so detrimental and decidedly injurious even when unaccompanied with religious instruction, as many good men seem to think. We do not surely make men worse by making them more advanced in knowledge take, for instance, the inhabitants of the great empire of Burmah; they are, generally speaking, an educated people, yet we do not find them to be in a lower state as moral beings than those around them, or even the more unruly subjects for that reason, under, perhaps, the most despotic monarchy in the world. Their religious, or rather irreligious errors are, it is true, awfully great, but not worse than those of their ignorant neighbours, the Hindoos; and I believe it will be found all over those interesting regions of the East, that the persons who have sought, and are now seeking the knowledge of divine truth, except in our missionary schools, were men whose minds had first received some measure of light and knowledge through the channel of ordinary education.

Ireland, we should remember, is a country under very peculiar circumstances. Her sons and daughters will have education; nor can those who would, keep it from them. The only question then, that remains for us, seems to me, to be this; Will you leave them in the hands of those who will give them only a bigotted Roman Catholic education, and teach them as a matter of faith and duty, to regard Protestantism, however pure its precepts and excellent its professors, as "pestilent heresy," and to look upon the Bible as a dangerous book; or will you give them a simple, sound, and unpre judiced education, calculated, at least, to open and unfetter their minds, and enable them to look around them with the feelings and views of free and responsible agents, even though you cannot add thereto the knowledge of the saving principles of divine truth? I do not see, myself, that either the honour of God, or the happiness of man would be compromised by such a system; I do not feel that it would be betraying the citadel of truth by unworthy compliances; nor do I think that it would be shrinking from the narrow and difficult path of a Christian's duty,

The God of heaven has written a book, and it is because I think that book ought to be universally read, that I would say, give the people education, even though in doing so, you cannot get them to read the Bible. Enable them, at least, to use that holy book, if they choose to do so, in the way, and to the end for which God intended and gave it; and trust to the good influences of his Holy Spirit to awaken an enquiry, wherever he will, after the great and solemn truths which that book contains. Thus you would, if I may so speak, be giving the goodness and mercy of God a fair opportunity to operate; but acting otherwise, it seems to me you almost tempt God; you expect effects, without employing the means; you tell men they ought to read, without affording them ability to do so; for unless God were to work a miracle in every individual case, how can people read the book of God who have never learned? To the natural dislike which our fallen nature has to divine things, such persons have to add the excuse of ignorance, a very powerful, and

often fatal operative in lulling the mind into a dangerous and careless security. In fine, then, while the Roman Catholic priesthood, as they think themselves gaining strength, are becoming every day more and more opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, I would say; let the people at least be enabled to see and examine the book to which their teachers so violently object. Bring curiosity as well as duty into operation, and enable them to consult the records of truth for themselves, and the light of truth will burst in upon many a benighted mind, whose "faith must otherwise stand, not in the truth of God, but in the wisdom of men."

I have been led to express my feelings on this subject at such length, and with so much earnestness, that I may perhaps seem to reason upon it, rather with the warmth of an advocate, than the humility of an enquirer. My desire, however, is, simply to state what has presented itself to my own mind, in the hope that in so doing I might perhaps be pointing out in some respects" a more excellent way for the moral and religious improvement of many of my fellow countrymen; or else that being weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, and found not only wanting but objectionable, its evil consequences may be more clearly pointed out and prevented, especially at a time like the present, when the expediency of such a system is likely to press itself the serious attention of many upon sincere well-wishers of our native land, as well as of

POLITELOS.

LIBERALITY-A SKETCH.

Its

The market-town of Moneyrogue, like many market-towns in Ireland, combined a great many advantages and disadvantages. It was beautifully situated upon a fine romantic looking river. church was admired for the chastened elegance of its architecture. It had an excellent and well-kept inn. Its dispensary was superintended by a most intelligent and feeling-hearted physician. The landlord, a man of large property, resided in the immediate vicinity all the year, and spent among his tenants every shilling which he drew from them. This was the fair side of the picture; but also it contained a most enormous and overgrown Romish chapel, and was (in great part) under the spiritual domination of two priests of most melancholy activity; and-which was the very acme of its inflictions-it was grievously afflicted by a spirit-a spirit! Yes, by a spirit of liberality.

Such, at least, were the conclusions, at which the Protestant curate had arrived, after a residence of three months in this his parish. The cidevant vicars and curates of Lisnaskea had not indeed for sixty or seventy years back complained of any thing of the kind, nor could they reasonably have done so. They and the respective priests of the place had fowled and fished, had hunted and dined together. Upon the Sundays, certainly there was this difference, that the former droned out of the Book of Common Prayer

to a congregation who cared nothing about the soul-saving truths which it so admirably embodies; and that the latter mumbled out of the Breviary to chapels-full and chapel-yards-full of benighted creatures who understood nothing about what they heard. In the church, indeed, there was a sermon once on Sundays, which sermon did no good, nor could it; for it was either some cold moral essay of Tillotson's, or some of the pulpit smartnesses of South, without a particle of the Gospel of Christ. In the chapel, nothing in the shape of a sermon was attempted, except on some saint's eve, or some great festival, on which occasions no more of the cross was exhibited, than what could be seen of it in the crucifix upon the altar, and which indeed it was boasted, contained a reasonably sized splinter of the true wood. Religion consequently never brought those worthies into collision at all. The priests never said a word against the Protestants, and as to what they did, in secretly wheedling over some, and frightening others, nobody minded it. Why should they? for in Moneyrogue it was the fashion to speak of both ways as pretty much alike. And he who should have ventured to insinuate otherwise, would have met perhaps as bad treatment from the Protestants as from those of the Romish creed, so great was their liberality. As it happens, however, that your genuine Anythingarians are defacto Nothingarians at bottom, so it was here. Never was a set of people more devoid of anything

even resembling godliness.

Such reflections as these it was, which oppressed the bosom of Mr. Montgomery, the curate aforesaid, as he stood before a splendid pair of richly ornamented gates, which formed an entrance to the demesne of the Hon. Mr. Egerton, the lord of the soil, and which gave a termination to the vista made by the principal street. It was his first visit, for Mr. E. had been absent ever since the cu rate arrived, on unavoidable business. As he sauntered slowly up the avenue he was well pleased with the intermingling of fragrant limes and branchy sycamores which occasionally interlaced their canopy over his head, or opened out on sunny parks studded over with beech and some majestic horse chesnuts, whose spiked chandeliers of snowy blossoms contrasted richly with the deep green of their leaves. He liked the slow passing to and fro of the sheep, as with tinkling bells they emerged into the light, or were lost amid the deep shade. He liked the swift trotting by of the deer, as half shy, half tame, they halted to peep out on the passenger, and then away for the forest glade. He liked the gay amphitheatre of flowering shrubs which secured by an invisible fence, spread out their gorgeous vegetation in all the varieties of Rhododendrons, Tamarisks, Daphnes, &c. &c. which decorate the vicinity of country residences. He looked at the house itself, and was well pleased, for it was built after one of the fairest models of Inigo Jones. But as he looked towards the hall-door, he was by no means pleased, for he saw emerging from out the shade of the portico, with that smile yet lingering on his cheek which indicates a recent success, the Rev. Felix Fogarty, P. P. of Moneyrogue.