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For this reason, among others, we have often been tempted to regret that children are allowed, in our day, so little time for exploring more manly books, and that the very desire to do so is stifled in its rise by the constant succession of abridgments, compilations, and juvenile periodicals. Miss Edgeworth deserves our thanks for having taken every opportunity of apprizing her little readers that there are large books in which they may find things which will delight and instruct them; but a considerable share of the spirit of enterprising curiosity is required to lead a child from his own well-filled shelves, groaning with elegant Lilliputian literature, to papa's plainer and more heavy-looking library.

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How much beauty is there in Mrs. Barbauld's Lessons! And yet we never can cease to regret that some few objectionable passages in them were not struck out before the hand that wrote them first was cold in the grave. Why should the little naughty boy who was cruel to his bird be denied a pretty name? Or why should goodness be connected with a name at all? And why resort to the improbable retributive justice recorded in the sequel? These things are vexatious, as coupled with such excellence. No veneration for an individual can ever reconcile us to superficial and faulty motives being inculcated on children. Miss Edgeworth too-wise, quick, and penetrating, as she is why should she ever have contemplated dispensing a school prize* " to the most amiable"? Can any thing be less amiable than the spirit in which a number of school-girls would be likely to contend for such a reward? Of writers for young people, Miss Aikin seems to us to deserve great gratitude. There is much negative as well as positive good in what she has done for them, and we trust this will seem to the reader, as it does to ourselves, to involve high praise. There are, indeed, numbers of books for children which contain useful and pleasing things, but the great, the lasting difficulty is, to meet with one that does no harm; and in saying this, we have an eye as much to manner as matter. What we like in Miss Aikin's Lesson Book for the Junior Classes,† is its scrupulous correctness as to facts of nature or real life, combined with a rare abstinence, in most cases, from advice-giving and moral-making, its perfect good taste, a spirit of good temper, a hearty interest in the beauties of creation, and on the harmony of the human heart with the fair-proportioned whole. She has not entered deeply into the life of children, but it is better to go but a little way and do it well, than to make large professions and fail. In her own department she is eminently happy; the execution, indeed, of what she does attempt is so excellent as often to have made us regret that her essays have not been more numerous: they might fill up a blank in our literature, and distance alike some of our absurdly romantic tales, and our dull moralities, while they would in no way interfere with the province of direct religious instruction.

In noticing children's religious books, how difficult to steer a just course! Practically, we have by no means that extreme horror of tales of the Calvinistic school which sways many of our Unitarian brethren, though to very little children we certainly would not give them. We do not think the chances of their doing an injury to the mind of a young person are to be named with the dangers connected with errors such as those we have pointed

* Parents' Assistant-" The Bracelets."

We

"A Lesson Book for the Junior Classes. By Lucy Aikin." Hunter. wish it had a prettier title. The quiet pleasantry of "the Cuckoo and Magpie," and the very pleasing piece entitled "the Pearl of Price," deserved this.

out in "Children as they Are." Is there any thing so very appalling in their being acquainted with the fact that a great difference of opinion exists among good people respecting certain doctrines? We have never found it difficult to make them comprehend and view these subjects candidly, and differ from those who would rob them of the advantage of knowing very early that there is good on all sides. It is a parent's business to prepare the way for these things; but that child must be ill prepared indeed, to whom a strong doctrinal expression can do harm. It may lead to inquiry and we know no evil in this. Whatever is written in perfect honesty and good faith, with love to God and love to Jesus, and good-will to man interwoven with its teachings, cannot surely be a thing to excite a parent's just dread. It is not that we are indifferent to unscriptural statements and superstitious notions: far otherwise but we sincerely think that parents are too anxious about accordance with their own opinions, and not solicitous enough respecting principle. If what appears to them a truth is stated, they are not sufficiently anxious to inquire whether the manner in which it is stated does not involve some sacrifice of the high tone of morality. However, we should fervently rejoice to see many of the books we have in view purified from their objectionable things, and to hail the multiplication of such as, while they are free from similar defects, are, at the same time, interesting and able. Our Unitarian volumes for children have been too often frigidly accurate, and laboriously dull. But they are improving. We trust a freer, more generous spirit is coming in. Unitarians will learn to look at Christianity less as it is anti-calvinism, abstractedly from the hurtful and narrowing and corroding view of its corruptions. Let them give themselves up to it as one with all that is noble in principle, beautiful in feeling, and lively and inspiriting in operation. Then, and then only, will they rise above the depressing thoughts of what is earthly, into the light of the heavenly. We hail such books as Mr. Greenwood's Lives of the Apostles, and Mr. Ware's Jotham Anderson, as inestimably valuable to young people. In these, there is heart: as much may be said of that beautiful little work, " Gospel Examples." Such of the American children's books as have been noticed in the Boston Christian Examiner, have, we must confess, disappointed us on more intimate acquaintance. Many of those published by Messrs. Bowles and Dearborn are prosing and heavy, the style inflated, and the narrative poor. We must, however, except "Winter Evenings in Boston," which, though immeasurably inferior to "Evenings Evenings at Home," is a work of great merit. It is time to close these very miscellaneous observations, and yet, since children, and the improvement of children, is our theme, we cannot forbear adverting to a late article in the Christian Examiner on "Early Religious Instruction." It is there supposed that a child is inquiring who made the flower which delights its senses by its beauty and fragrance. parent's answer is to be, unhesitatingly, "God;" and the Christian Examiner delights himself in thinking that the name of the Deity will thenceforth be associated in the child's mind with one of his most beautiful works. But why should not the idea have been more firmly established in the infant being by a short suspension of the satisfaction of its curiosity, while it is aided, as kindly and gently as possible, in the examination of those circumstances in the growth of a flower which have a human origin, and those which cannot be accounted for by any visible agency?

The

Give a child a mere name, and you are near giving it stones when it asks for bread; but let it feel and distinguish the effect of a Power which it does not see, let it trace this Power allied with goodness, with the production of a

beautiful effect, and the impression on its mind will be as living and permanent as that mind itself. Who can doubt which is nearest to a true knowledge of God, the child who, from our assertion, has learned the name of the Maker of the flower, and rests there; or he who feels the existence of a Power capable of producing such effects, without as yet knowing his name? There is great beauty in some conversations on this subject in a tale by the Rev. Henry Duncan, "The Cottager's Fireside." The existence of a Creator and Preserver has been made manifest to the child, and her heart has been touched by the proofs of his fatherly kindness, but yet, familiar as she had been with the name of God as her Maker, through means of her Catechism, so entirely unfruitful has it proved, that she is quite at a loss to comprehend of whom her uncle is now speaking. "But, uncle," she says, "I thought God made me, for the Caritchies says sae, and mammy says that God lives in heaven, far above the skies." We are too anxious about giving the name, before we have led the way to the feeling that there is a Power in the universe, the existence of which is demonstrated to us as well as the child by its effects. Hence the idea is not a living one in the child's mind, and bears no fruit. In giving religious instruction, we cannot be too careful that the spirit of the child should co-operate with all we do. The idea of putting religion into the mind as we would put learning, is a most fatal one. We may teach it the external facts of Christianity; indeed, those it is every way unwise to withhold; for the facts of our religion, and especially the life, death, and example of Christ, are most beautifully adapted to arouse and stimulate the spirit: but religion itself cannot be given by one being to another, for it is the communion of man with his Maker, the intercourse of the Father of spirits with our spirits, and all human teaching is serviceable only as it leads us to feel the closeness and the extent of the union by which HE, the great Parent of all, has made us His.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

THEOLOGY.

ART. I.-Discourses on the Office and
Character of Jesus Christ. By
Henry Ware, Jun. Second Edi-
tion. Boston, U. S.

If this highly valuable series of Discourses has not yet received formal notice in our pages, it is not because we have thought little of its claims to whatever we can offer in the way of recommendation to the Christian community. Mr. Ware's "Jotham Anderson" is well known; as the author of several beautifal devotional poems, particularly one, first published in the Christian Examiner, entitled "Seasons of Prayer," his name

has also for some time been familiar to many of our readers; and to ourselves it has long appeared that his modest and unpretending volume of Sermons on "the Character and Offices of Jesus," is one of the best presents which a Unitarian minister ever bestowed on his own flock, and the family of co-worshipers throughout the world. It is no collection of vague generalities, of tedious common-places. Without rising into absolute eloquence, the style appears to us pure, easy, and elegant-never cumbrous, never affected-above all, never dull. We should say that the spirit is throughout that of a genuine lover of

our great Master-of one who had deeply and affectionately meditated on his life and precepts-one, too, who had not excluded from his mind the contemplation of Heathen virtue in its highest forms, but, full fraught with the recollection of what was best in the sages of elder times, had come to the reading of the gospel, and found its wisdom deeper, its spirit purer. Mr. Ware's object is one of no mean extent. The survey of our Saviour in the various relations in which he stands to us, is in itself a very animating and vast one; and though we remember that it chiefly treats of what has been done and is doing for man, rather than what he is to do for himself by means of the grace bestowed upon him, every Christian must surely feel the connexion in which he stands to the great First-born from the dead, as one of the most interesting subjects which can occupy his thoughts. This subject is Mr. Ware's, and though one alone, it is most glorious and comprehensive in its unity.

With some ministers, the Saviour is not made a sufficiently prominent object; with others," to round the closing period with his name," is very essential, and this constant repetition, accompanied by the frequent genuflection, wearies and often disgusts us in the services of the Established Church. Among the Evangelical part of the clergy, the same blessed name is repeated, as if mercy were centered there, and nowhere else throughout the wide creation; but, with Mr. Ware, there is no such imperfection or disproportion. Christ is the effect of a Father's mercy and love, the Saviour is the kind gift of one willing to save; the beautiful precepts he gave, and the light he threw upon the counsels of Almighty God, are not put before us as things utterly foreign to the previous ideas and capacities of the human race; on the contrary, it is because they are so suitable, so consonant to expectation, so conformable in all things to what we should have looked for and to what we want, that we find unceasing reason to treasure and revere them.

We do not make extracts from Mr. Ware's volume, for it is so small and so marvellously and modestly cheap, that it ought to be in the hands of almost every reader. We particularly recommend it to our chapel livraries.

ART. II.-Sermons on the Principal Festivals and Holydays of the Church. By the Rev. Arthur T. Russell, S. C. L. of St. John's College, Cambridge.

WHERE did the author of this volume concoct the following passage? It is so much above, in spirit and expression, the rest of his book, that we transcribe it with real pleasure, only wishing heartily we could find more such, and we would praise and quote accordingly. But, spite of the absence of originality and impressiveness, we have at least found subject for commeudation in the utter absence of pretension. We cannot for a moment question the entire sincerity of the author, but we do question his experience and reflection, or why does he speak of some people fearing that "they cannot make up their minds to love God as they ought"? Love is not surely a matter of mental determination, though the removal of obstacles to its growth and increase may be so.

"If, by loving God, we meant the mere contemplation of the pleasures of heaven, aud of the consolations of religion, the raptures of praise, and the complacent wanderings of the imagination, many might then say that they loved God. For many thus seem to themselves to dwell in paradise: but they walk not with God among the trees of this garden. They build to themselves a temple, but themselves form the glory of it, not the light of God and of the Lamb. Nay, in this paradise and temple the spirit of self is still alive, and opens and shuts the gate at pleasure; and from this fancied heaven the rain descends not on the evil and on the good: the sun shines not on the just and on the unjust; for ali this enchantment is the heaven of self and of pride, not of the great God, who is love."-P. 178.

We differ from the conclusion, "Such is the heaven of the proudly devout," for we know of no devotion which is proud, nor any pride that is devout. We have noted one very singular expression in the Sermon on Good Friday:

"We therefore plead the cause of blood. The blood of the Son of God is upon you; do not trample upon it," &c. Of the Sermon on Trinity Sunday we can only say, that its argument seems to us exceedingly weak, and that we cannot understand how its author could venture to print any thing so loose and so imperfectly put together, on such a subject. Such is the ignorauce prevailing among

village congregations, indeed, generally, that, so long as the minister quotes Scripture, he is allowed great latitude of misapplication; but it is otherwise when a sermon-writer appears in print. We have sometimes wished it were possible to peep into futurity, with a special view to eyeing the state of our Church of England. It is really a curious subject of speculation. We are not thinking of her externals now; but is it possible that, a hundred years hence, congregations all over a Christian land will be repeating, as part of the expression of their own feelings, David's bitter curses upon his enemies? Will they really with their united voices pour out the expressions of triumph over" Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan"? No part of the service so much excites our wonder as this. Is no change ever to take place? Yes, a change has taken place and it has been dwelt upon with feelings of great complacency. Whether the burden of the last verse of a Psalm fall upon the clergyman or the clerk, it is now customary for the former to begin each Psalm. It is now possible for him to read a verse out of his turn. We cannot recollect the name of the Bishop who has brought about this revolution; but it is of about three years' standing.

The Church must do far more than this. Society is moving on and ou-not always for the better indeed-but still it is on the move-and if it does not always discern and practise the thing that is right, it is opening its eyes to that which is wrong. We wish all the members of the Church satisfaction with her ordinances, so far as they are pure and scriptural; and many, very many, of them contain much that is of the spirit of Christianity; but they must root out some of the tares-the hour is come. Let them do it "now while it is called today."

ART. III-A Discourse on the Authenticity and Divine Origin of the Old Testament, with Notes and Illustrations. Translated from the French of J. E. Cellérier, by the Rev. J. R. Wreford. London. 1830.

THE original of this publication, and its companion, the discourse De l'Origine Authentique et Divine du Noveau Testament, were reviewed with deserved commendation in our number for October, 1829.

The English language has been much corrupted by translations from the

French, made, as booksellers' speculations, by persons whose needs were greater than their abilities. It would be easy to illustrate this remark in instances of Gallicisms in words, in meanings, in constructions, introduced by ignorance, and propagated by affectation. It is important, therefore, that the work of translation should be in the hands of persons fitted by education to execute the task. We cannot, then, be otherwise than glad that Professor Cellérier's volume has been presented to the English reader by one so competent, as he has proved himself, to preserve both the meaning of the original and the purity of the version. We are also indebted to Mr. Wreford for a few notes, whose value makes us desiderate more. This iudeed we may say of the whole of the volume, and we therefore hope that the sale of it will be such as to justify him in carrying into effect the intimation which he has given in his preface, by translating Professor Cellérier's Discourse on the Authenticity and Divine Origin of the New Testament. A lower price on the present publication would probably have promoted this desirable object.

ART. IV.-Selection of Psalms and Hymns, for Social and Private Worship. By L. Lewis. Dorchester. THE writers of Hymns lie under very peculiar hardship. Divorce one of Moore's Anacreontics from a National Melody, and publish it, and you will be presently visited with legal inflictions. Form a selection of poetry, and borrow as largely as you please from the stores of other writers, but alter not, or you will subject yourself to a storm of indignation from the respective authors. But take their HYMNS, change words, lines, stanzas; add, alter, mutilate as you will; only serve your own purpose-aud no one, it would seem, has a right to find fault. "The names of their respective authors being of course omitted," it is no sin and no shame.

There are, however, several strong reasons against this common practice. The Hymns which are associated in the minds of Christian worshipers with the recollection of dear aud venerated fellow-servants of Jesus, cannot be disjoined by the circumstance of the name being omitted in one or two collections. But the verbal, and, by degrees, the more important corruptions of the text, will certainly make their way. Succeeding Editors restore the nanie, but often

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