THIRDLY. The rare openings for female service in our country make it an interesting field for the application of the right principles of education. There are at least three departments which offer peculiar inducements to the energies of female character.

1. The department of public instruction comes peculiarly within woman's province. The office of teacher in institutions of learning demands a large number of highly gifted and well-trained females. It is universally admitted that female teachers are altogether the best for young children. There is an adaptation to the wants of the little ones, a kind appreciation of their character, a condescension to their difficulties and trials, a loving sympathy with their feelings in study hours and at play time, which mark out the gentler sex as their natural instructors. Hence the common schools in many parts of the country, especially in New England, greatly prefer females as teachers. The higher seminaries for the sex, of course, look chiefly for their instructors to ladies of richly cultivated minds. So that there is very great encouragement to females to qualify themselves for the work of instructors by means of a thorough and liberal education. And what office is there of higher aim than that of teacher? There is none that so comes in contact with the human soul and is able so to mould it intellectually and religiously. The office of the ministry is higher in official authority, and has a greater range of influence. But ministers do not generally possess the same amount of influence over an equal number in their congregations as a teacher does in her school. Never can there be a more congenial theatre for the exercise of her faculties than in the training of the young. How beautiful the spectacle to behold a lady of cultivated mind, of pious, devotional spirit, of pleasant utterance, of graceful condescending manners, at the head of her class, inculcating knowledge secular and divine! No country presents stronger pleas than ours for female teachers. Would that more in the upper circles of life were willing to receive the dignity and honours of this great profession!

2. Another department, making a demand upon educated female talent in our country is that of philanthropy and religion. A great work is to be done for the cause of truth and morals by active female influence. Our sabbath schools require a far better educated and more competent set of teachers, of the unprofessional class, than is commonly found in them. Our female benevolent societies, tract distribution, prayer meetings, call for educated and capable ladies to superintend and give interest to them. The temperance reformation in like manner has great faith in the power of woman to advance its aims. It is impossible to read the salutation of Paul to the females in Rome, who bestowed much labour" on him, who "laboured in the Lord," who "laboured much in the Lord," without feeling that the power of the sex in promoting religion should be used by every wise "master-builder." In short, the cause of religion and philanthropy, much as it has always depended upon the co-operation of woman, might acquire a great accession of strength by the increased educational privileges of the sex.

3. Literature is another department, standing wide open with garlands upon its gates for the admission of educated ladies. The female pen has done no mean service already in the propagation and defence of truth, and in the pleasant entertainment of the public mind through general literature and the genial effusions of poetry. A large number of Sunday-school and other religious books have come fresh from the female heart to make their unending impressions. There is far too little conscience on the part of highly cultivated ladies in using the press as the vehicle of the influence which providence and grace have given them. No country was ever more inviting to female writers than our own. Our monthly and weekly periodicals might be made far more interesting by a large addition of their contributions; and our general literature be graced with many valuable publications of well qualified authoresses.

The three departments of public instruction, philanthropy and literature are eminently favourable to the cultivation of female intellect in our country. The proud world may indeed despise the modest, unobtrusive worth of woman in any of these occupations; and fashionable circles may imagine that the highest end of creation is adornment of person, dissipation of time, and vain display of wealth and of trivial accomplishment. But the great aim of Christian woman is to do good, in whatever station God may have placed her, and with whatever gifts endowed her. Let her take courage and go forward in unambitious but earnest effort.

"With the mild light, some unambitious star

Illumes her pathway through the heavenly blue-
So unobtrusive that the careless view

Scarce notes her where her haughtier sisters are-
So ran thy life. Perhaps, from those afar,
Thy gentle radiance little wonder drew,

And all their praise was for the brighter few.
Yet mortal vision is a grevious bar

To weigh true worth, For were the distance riven,
Our eyes might find that star so faintly shone,
Because it journeyed through a higher zone,

Had more majestic sway and duties given,
Far loftier station on the heights of heaven,

Was next to God, and circled round his throne."*

The

FOURTHLY. Another aspect of our subject comes before us. great moral destiny of this republic demands the highest order of woman. Our country is undoubtedly destined to exert a powerful influence in the affairs of the world. Its greatness already towers aloft amidst the glory of kingdoms and the monuments of national achievement. The little colonies of our early history have been consolidated into a nation, whose territory counts its parallels of latitude by a score, and whose circles of longitude expand from 10 East of Washington to 45 West. Within this magnificent domain, bounded by the two great oceans of the world, lives a people whose general

G. H. Boker.

ingredient of sturdy Anglo Saxon is healthfully diversified by the traits of all nations. With resources unlimited, with population rapidly increasing, with a position commanding eastwardly, westwardly, or southerly, with a self-reliance nurtured by Providence and never yet thwarted by the power of man, and with a religious character hopeful in its ultimate development, our country must needs take an influential part in future history. As God has led on the world to its present condition of civilization and progress by selecting particular nations to be prominent actors of His plans, so there is every reason to believe that the United States are at least one of the modern nations, predestined to assist the marshalling of events in all future ages. The English language, that of our country in common with Great Britain, is the language of Christianity. This fact alone guarantees predominating weight. Religion is the great civilizing, all-conquering element. The signs of the times not obscurely foretell the national greatness of this Anglo Saxon, Christian land. Our "manifest destiny" is to propagate civil liberty and religious freedom throughout the world; to advance civilization and the cause of Christ on every continent.

In this vast and sublime work, educated woman has a prominent allotment. Nothing great has ever been achieved, and made permanent in the history of human progress, without the help rendered through the social elevation and influence of the female sex. There have been prowess of arms, enterprise of commerce, high cultivation of the arts, attainments of literature, accumulations of wealth; but no nation has ever yet prospered that rejected woman's elevation from among the powers of social life. The progress of our country eminently requires the conservatism, the holy zeal, the purity, the energy of Christian womanhood. The sex should be educated to perform the part of a high destiny. Education alone can give the qualifications demanded for a day of national eminence in the ingathering of the nations unto God.

YOUNG LADIES OF THE ACADEMY!

I turn from my subject to you. It is pleasant to pass from the abstract to the living embodiment, from glimpses of principles to glances of sight, from the truths of discussion to the existences of nature blooming with hope and joy. Now is the time, ladies, to act your part in the grand scenes of Providence to which the world is advancing. Each has a good and great work to do, if each is faithful to God, to the sex, to the race. Education, the object of your daily effort, is only the means to the end; and the end is to serve God through the gifts and privileges of His goodness. Shrink not with faint-hearted timidity from the thought of present and future duty. The Creator had high objects in placing Eve by the side of Adam in Paradise; and all of Eve's daughters must perform the obligations of their sex in winning back the world from the tempter's power to the true authority of the "seed of the woman." Bitterly knowing the difference between "good and evil," it is yours to aid

the triumphs of Redemption throughout the earth. If you would be useful, young ladies, you must add to your knowledge, religion.

Permit me, as a plea in behalf of personal religion, to remind you of the special obligations of the sex to Christianity. Whatever religion has done for man, it has relatively done more for woman. The blessed Master, instead of despising the sex, as the philosophers had done, selected them as his companions and friends. "He went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him ;" but not they alone. No, the company was enlarged by the loving companionship of Mary, and Joanna, and Susanna and "many others" who "ministered unto him of their substance." Our Lord, in thus associating females with his holy band of disciples, left to all ages the authority of his example in behalf of woman's social elevation and influence. Christianity is pre-eminently woman's friend. Its progress is the acknowledgment of her equal rights, of her domestic power, of her mental cultivation, of her reign of love. Oh ye, who are indebted to the gospel of Christ for all the privileges of home, education and life, come to your Saviour. Come to Him, who died for you, uniting in His glorious person the sonship of Mary with the Sonship of God!

[It is proper to state that the foregoing address on female education was delivered at the Blairsville Female Seminary, Pa., on September 27th, 1853.—ED.]

EDUCATION.

BY J. BOWRING.

A child is born-now take the germ and make it

A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews

Of knowledge, and the light of virtue wake it
In richest fragrance and in purest hues.

When passion's gust and sorrow's tempest shake it,
The shelter of affection ne'er refuse,

For soon the gathering hand of death will break it,
From its weak stem of life, and it shall lose
All power to charm; but, if the lovely flower
Hath swelled one pleasure, or subdued one pain,
O who shall say that it hath lived in vain,

However fugitive its breathing hour?
For virtue leaves its sweets wherever tasted,
And scattered truth is never, never wasted.

ARTICLE VII.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN COLLEGES.

BY THE REV. C. VAN RENSSELAER, D.D.

"THE importance, nature, and extent of religious instruction in colleges" is the subject assigned for one of the hours of this Inauguration Festival. I rejoice in the magnitude of the theme. It is a good thing to stand among the mountain ranges of the moral creation; to look upon the awe-inspiring altitude and expansion of topics involving human destiny; and from the clefts in the rock to catch glimpses of the goodness of God's truth passing by in unspeakable majesty.

The elevated themes and associations of education are appropriate objects of our meditation to day. Our faith is aided by sight. An institution stands before us, covered with the ivy of half a century, and hallowed by the prayers of the pioneers of Western Pennsylvania. If those men of precious memory were in the land of the living and in this assembly, with what fervour would they pray "GOD BLESS THE COLLEGE!" Their joys would mingle with ours in the repair of its breaches, the building of its towers, the endowment of its resources, and the increased sympathy of the Church and of its friends. To them, as to us, religious instruction would be of paramount interest on this auspicious occasion. And oh! if we had seen the visions of glory, which have greeted their eyes in the revelations of a better world, what light and zeal might irradiate the speaker in uttering, and melt the hearers in acknowledging, the truth pertaining to this discussion. The help that we all need in our weakness, do thou, God of our fathers, supply!

I. The first point, that claims consideration in opening the assigned discussion, is the general IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN COLLEGES. Its nature, and the extent of its introduction, depend very much upon the opinions entertained of its value.

1. Religion has claims for admission into a course of liberal education, as the chief branch of human knowledge. It is pre-eminent among the acquisitions of men, yea, and of all created beings. The highest kind of learning and wisdom is that which relates to God, his existence, attributes, government, plan of grace, and the duties of a state of probation. Deprived of this knowledge, a course of education would be comparative vanity. The scriptures, which are our rule of faith and practice, lay all the emphasis of training upon training in religion. The object of the covenant, of divine commands and of promises, is "nurture in the Lord"-a glorious end, ever kept in view on the pages of revelation. Secular knowledge has indeed its place, and a prominent place in all instructive arrangements.