growth of the spiritual sanctuary in man's soul, reared up by the Holy Spirit for his own indwelling. Stone after stone is added to the ascending structure; but no man witnesses the silent and impressive operations of the heavenly workman. "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." surface; the mysterious processes of true type of the silent, IMPERCEPTIBLE nature through which it is evolved. We are only spectators of the wonderful result, the upspringing from corruption of the new plant, and its onward progress to maturity and perfection. What man of wisdom and science has fathomed the beautiful mystery of the transformation of a miserable grub into the radiant creature, which,-type of a nobler resurrection,-rises from its long entombment to unfold its painted wings, and sport in the brief sunshine of a summer's day? And what eye, but the pitying eye of a loving God, has looked upon the pangs and throes which mark the advent of a soul's new birth? The man is a new creature; but we cannot enumerate or trace the steps which have finally conducted to the great change. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." And, as in the commencement, so in the advancement of this growth. It is silent; it is imperceptible. No discoveries are made of the wonder-working power of the Holy Spirit. We read, in the Book of Kings, a remarkable characteristic of the Temple of Solomon, which furnishes an appropriate illustration of the present subject. "And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house when it was in building." What an impressive spectacle must that building have been in the process of construction! Rising gradually in all its stateliness-in all its harmony of parts-in all its wonderful magnificence and beauty; yet all silently-no other sound heard than the footsteps of workmen, or the voice of the architects, with solemn and subdued tones, issuing their orders; pile after pile appearing without the appliances of axe or hammer, as if human agencies were unemployed-as if this were indeed a temple not made with hands—the surprising creation of an unseen and spiritual intelligence. The building, brethren, of this temple, is a And be assured that, if you are not jus Another characteristic of Christian progression is this-it BEGINS AND IS CARRIED ON IN THE PRESENT WORLD. This is true of the new birth, and it is also true of the soul's growth. There is, indeed, nothing that is strictly new in the life of heaven. It is only a difference in degree and not in kind. Holiness is not created there; it is only confirmed and made perfect. Love is not an attribute peculiar to the upper sanctuary; it is not dependent for its life and growth on the nature of the influences by which it is surrounded. It is not a rare and exotic plant, which lives only in sunny climes and balmy atmospheres, and droops at the first touch of the northern blast; it is a hardy plant, natural to all soils, maturing in spite of influences the most unpropitious, flowering in the wastes and wildernesses of the world, and shedding its precious fragrance where everything apart from it is barrenness and desolation. The life of heaven is simply the life of earth prolonged, deepened, and intensified. This is a very solemn and impressive truth. It tells us, in plain language, that if we are not holy and loving now, we cannot be holy and loving hereafter. There are links of inseparable connection between our present and our future states. That which has been, is; and there is nothing new under the sun. The past has made us what we are, and the present will make us what we shall be. Youth is the parent of manhood, manhood of age, and life of eternity. "He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he that is righteous, let him be righteous still." If, then, you would reach heaven, you must become heavenly now; you must put on heaven's character, and enter into heaven's employments, and enjoy a foretaste of heaven's felicities. I remark, in the last place, that Christian progression is an ETERNAL THING. This is a blessed truth; blessed because there is much here to create discouragement and awaken despair. We can never be perfect on earth, and we do not expect we can. And why are we, therefore, so often mourning, so often disposed to cease from our efforts and abandon our Christian course? Oh! it is not from our want of perfection, but our want of ability to preserve whatever of Christian perfection we have made our own. tified and sanctified on earth, you cannot | There are some thoughts that we cannot be so in heaven; if you die with your utter-that fill and possess the mind— soul dead to holiness, you must live for that are too great to be grasped and exever without being quickened; if you are pressed by human language. What not renewed in the spirit of your mind could Isaiah say in presence of the grand here, you cannot be renewed hereafter; vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, for character is fixed by death, and high and lifted up, and his train filled stereotyped by eternity. the Temple! What, in presence of this august revelation of the Divine Majesty, could the prophet say, but, "Woe is me, I am undone?" What, but language stammering and incoherent, could a man like Paul use, who had passed into the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words, which it was not possible for a man to utter? and what, if we were transported to the inaccessible glory, and gazed upon the vision beatific, and mingled with the harpers standing on the sea of glass, harping with their harps, and our eyes were filled with the light of the city which hath no need of the sun, and our ears filled with that undying music which floats through the upper sanctuary-what account could be given by us of our Patmos vision? We should stand as dumb then as we do now. What avail our laboured efforts of description? why tax imagination to create a scene that is inconceivable? The poet may exhaust his imagery, the painter may exhaust his colouring, and what ideas have we gained from the pictures of both? Better far is the simple but powerful language of the sacred volume. Infinitely more expressive its faint sketches, its shadowy imperfect outlines, that trace out as it were the majestic picture, and leave us to muse upon it, and fill it up as best we may, with its undepicted splendours. We mourn our weakness and waywardness, our want of consistency, our frequent declensions, our lamentable fallings away from our early faith and our first love. Well may our souls be humbled; well may we weep in bitterness, when we think that, in spite of all that the Saviour has done and suffered, in spite of the grace and assistance of the promised Spirit, we are still found worldly and selfish, still indulging in the pleasures of sense, still forced to exclaim, "My leanness, my leanness!" and this, too, in the midst of all our light and all our privileges. Oh, how blessed, how comforting the assurance, that all this will have no place in the heavenly state! All hindrances, all obstructions to our spiritual advancement, whether arising from within or without, shall be taken out of the way, and removed for ever. Never again shall sin defile us, never again shall we know a doubt, never shall the heart be the seat of coldness, never shall our zeal decline, nor our love languish. The race that is set before us we shall run without weariness, without an encumbering weight, and separate for ever from the sin which doth so easily beset us. There is no goal to that race-it is eternal. In concluding our remarks on this subject, we are filled with profound apprehension of its richness and sublimity. "From strength to strength." Ponder for ever on these words-you can never expound their meaning. What can we learn from them more than this-the onward and ever onward career of a soul in heaven? The eye of the eagle it is said grows brighter and brighter the higher it soars and the more it drinks in the glory of the risen sun. And the higher a Christian rises, the nearer his approach to the fountain of light and purity, the more will his own being be expanded and glorified; his strength will be greater, his beauty more exceeding beautiful, his zeal more ardent, his love more seraphic. Oh, what a view is here opened up to those who have looked on the glory of the Lord, and been changed into the same image! One stage of perfection shall be reached, only to conduct you upward to another and higher. Like the traveller among Alpine ranges, you may clamber to a steep ascent, and imagine that before you, the vision is clear, and the prospect boundless. But the summit that shall then be attained, shall be only a platform to raise you to further advances, from which you shall speedily mount up to essay, with tireless wing, a sublimer height, and reach forward to a grander contemplation. "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." "Beloved, now are we the sons of God: and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him.” A FEW WORDS ON TRAINING. "TRAIN up a child in the way he should go.' TRAINING is not teaching merely a child what it ought to do; it is this, and a great deal more. There may be a right teaching which does no good; because, along with it, there is a wrong training which does much harm. Is "Give me some of that," said a peevishlooking boy of about seven or eight years of age to his mother, who was seated on the deck of a steamer in which I happened to be lately. The mother had some eatables in her hand. "Hold your tongue, Peter," replied the mother; "you won't get it." "I want that," again demanded Peter, with increased earnestness. "I tell you,” said the mother, looking at him, "you will not get it. that not enough for you? Go and play yourself, and be a good boy." "But I want that," reiterated Peter, beginning to sulk and look displeased. "What a laddie!" exclaimed the mother. "Have I not told you twenty times never to ask a thing when I say that you are not to get it?" "I want that," cried Peter, more violently than ever, bursting into tears. "Here!" said the mother, "take it, and be quiet. I am sure I never, in all my life, saw such a bad boy!" bably, to be a selfish and self-willed young man. His mother sees it, and suffers from it; but she wonders how such a temper or disposition should shew it. self in her Peter! and consoles herself with the thought, that whatever is the cause of so mysterious a dispensation, from no fault in her could it have come, nor" from want of telling." That day in the steamer, for instance, Peter was probably taught many more lessons even than I heard ;-such as, not to be selfish, not to ask things which he was assured, on a mother's word, he would not get. But while thus taught a number of duties in words, to what was he trained in practice? What, but to have no faith in a mother's word; to have no regard to a mother's wishes and commands; to hold out with dogged obstinacy, and he was sure, in the long run, to have his own way; and, when all else failed, to be sulky and cry, and his mother would certainly reward him by giving him all he asked for! Do you not perceive that there is some difference between teaching and training? In another chapter I will say something about how children should be trained. I only wish you, at present, to understand what training implies. Alas! poor boy, he had more reason, if he only knew it, to complain of his Its object is to help the young to form mother. good habits,-not only to teach them what This same boy, Peter, grows up, pro- it is right to be or to do, though this in struction is an essential element in train-resigned themselves as slaves to the ing, but to aid them to be right, and do right, according to the instruction given them. The training of the mind may be illustrated by the training of the body. You have heard of men being "trained" to perform some feat demanding great muscular strength and exertion, such as walking or running a certain number of miles within a certain given time. Such persons put themselves under what is termed a course of training, in which the trainer, who prepares them for their intended display, does not content himself with "telling" them what to do, or merely prescribing rules to them; but he subjects them to a hard discipline day by day; and only after a long and severe course of self-denial, are they at last fitted to perform the task they have undertaken. The apostle Paul selects the runners in the famous races at Corinth, who sought to gain a corruptible crown of green leaves, as illustrations of the earnest striving which should characterize Christians who are called to run the race set before them, for "a crown which fadeth not away;" and accordingly, the training to which those Greeks were obliged to submit may also, in some respects, illustrate the less severe, indeed, but not less real, discipline which Christians demand who are preparing to run the race set before them in the Gospel. The apostle says of the Corinthian runners, that they were obliged to be "temperate in all things:" or, to quote the language of an able writer upon this point,-"They exerted an habitual selfcommand-they kept in check every desire-they denied themselves every indulgence- they abstained from every employment—they rejected every luxury, which might tend to enervate their vigour, or clog their agility, or tame their courage; they observed a stated regimen -they trained themselves by laborious exercises-they used a thousand painful and distasteful arts to brace their nerves, sharpen their perceptions, and mature their skill; they kept their bodies under, and brought them into subjection; they parted with their freedom for a time, and direction and control of some master of athletic arts, under whose iron discipline they had many things to do, and many things to endure,-to become patient of cold, and heat, and hunger, and thirst, and watching, and painfulness, and weariness, and all but intolerable hardships. To a training, thus toilsome and intense, the children of the noblest commonwealths of Greece, the kings and princes of her hundred colonies, were wont to submit themselves without repining, with all the activeness and alacrity of a voluntary choice. Yet all this was but the prelude, and the preparation for the race which was to gain a corruptible crown!'" Far be it from me to affirm, that Christian habits may not be formed without such iron rule as this; or that the sunny Christian home must be converted into a hard and inexorable "house f correction!" But, nevertheless, every one who is, in truth, a disciple of Christ must be disciplined, and such habits formed as require real self-denial. I have said that training has especial reference to the formation of Habits. Now we all know what is meant by a habit. It is well described as being a second nature. It is called a nature, because the thing done is easily done, and comes as it were naturally to us; and it is a second nature, because the habit is not born with us, but acquired. The law of habit, as it is termed, is this, that what we do frequently, and with a good will, we learn to do easily. Every person is, more or less, "a bundle of habits." Most of these have been acquired so imperceptibly, or possessed for so many years, that they seem to belong to our first rather than to our second nature. Thus, walking, speaking or reading a language, are obviously mere habits. We learned them; and, if we think they cost no trouble or effort, just let us watch children, and see what time they take, what difficulties they overcome, and what trouble it gives them before they learn to walk steadily, to speak intelligibly, or to read tolerably. Every mechanic who learns bis trade, has but acquired a habit of doing easily and well what, without repeated efforts for months and years, he could not do at all. The musician, who plays some instrument with ease and grace, filling the ears and soul with sweetest sounds and harmonies, while executing some difficult and intricate piece of music, is a remarkable and common instance of the power of habit. Innumerable illustrations will occur to yourselves, of this singular capacity in man to learn to do what would otherwise be impossible. It is more difficult to say what cannot than what can be acquired by this singular power with which God has endowed us. It is true, that in Christian education we have to do more with mental and moral habits than me chanical ones, with such habits as obedience, self-denial, perseverance, patience, and the like. But the same law applies also to them; for the oftener we do what is right, with a good will to it, the easier the being and doing right become and a second nature supersedes the first. The great object, therefore, of parental training is, as I have already remarked, to help the child, by the right use of all the powers and assistances God has given the parent, to acquire those good habits or ways which he will keep through life, and not depart from when he is old. Now youth has been termed the habit season. It is then that the young twig takes the twist which the old bough retains. "The child is father of the man." Every one knows in his own experience, and to his joy or sorrow, how true it is that youth, as well as "life," is emphatically "The season God hath given To fly from hell, and rise to Heaven." I shall not at present remind my readers of those conditions which require to be fulfilled, in order that habits may be formed, except that of a willing mind, or a real hearty liking on the part of the child, a taking to that good which the parent wishes should grow into a habit. Without this no moral habits can be formed. It is perfectly possible, perhaps, by outward authority or force, to insure the doing of certain acts again and again by the outward man, but never shall the inner man be thus made to love the right as well as do it. The power of doing a thing, and the love of doing it, are very different. The arts, for instance, of reading, writing, &c., may be taught from fear or compulsion, and be acquired with or without pleasure by the learner; and in spite of the will, can be retained and practised in after years. But all this will not insure such habits, as would necessarily lead the child ever to put pen to paper, or read a volume through. The reason is that no habit of mind can ever be formed by a rational being, however frequently acts are repeated, unless these are voluntary. The love of good can alone displace the love of evil. This leads to a practical conclusion, which must never be lost sight of in Home Education, viz., that the happiness and cheerful obedience of the child is essential to secure the formation of good habits. Without this, it may be forced up, but never trained up, in the way in which it should go. There is one other point on which I may here hazard an opinion, and that is, the period of life in the child when parents should apply themselves with earnestness to this work of training. Now, without presuming to decide so delicate a point, it is necessary for me to say, that I intend my few hints on Home Education to apply to the training up of the young after infancy, and from childhood till youth; or from about their fifth year till they reach twelve or fifteen. The ten years after early childhood I would specially characterize as the habit season of life. I have no advice whatever to offer parents as to home education during infancy beyond this,-to interfere with their children as little as possible. There are few things in this world more wonderful to a thoughtful mind, or more delightful to a benevolent heart, than the joy of children. One of our greatest poets says, with much truth:"In clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home;' We need not do any thing to make the child happy. It is naturally happy in itself. From the joy which God sheds within its soul like sunlight, joy shines upon everything without, and is reflected |