in every sense celestial. The flowers of the spring yearly delight us by their return, because of prototypes in the spiritual world which are immortal, though their material emblems, like the beautiful Dissolving Views, come but to flee away; and tried by the Sensational standard of the real, seem to be gone and lost for ever. The rose seems to wither, its petals scatter, and its loveliness is only a recollection; but the real rose can never perish. The real rose abides where it always was,—in the spiritual world; and there it will subsist for ever; and when we cast off our own leaves, we shall find it there in all its deathless beauty, along with all the other loved and vanished. God takes care of all that is truly beautiful and precious, and reserves it for us, provided we will go and take possession. We have but to cross the dark river confident in his trustworthiness, and we shall not be disappointed. God loves to be trusted. Then, too, we shall behold the spiritual sea, and islands, and rivers, and sun, and stars, and trees, just as St. John beheld them when God opened his eyes so that he might tell us of them in the Apocalypse, and as we continually express our own personal hope in respect of, in that beautiful anticipative hymn beginning

We all came into the world for something; we shall all go out of it for more; just as when daylight is exchanged for starlight, we lose our consciousness of the terrestrial in the superber consciousness of the universal.

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for his lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?

Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

But, because of these prospects, we are not to think slightingly of the present life and its arena. Each sphere of being is divine, for each is the work of God, and if not felt sacred, it is the observer that is in fault. Many think that because heaven, which is the sunny part of the spiritual world, is above all things holy, therefore the material world, this earth, is vile,-the devil's kingdom. Not so. The world, properly regarded, is God's kingdom, not the devil's. Hell only is the devil's kingdom.· The functions of our temporal life are as noble in their degree as those of eternity can be. Our relations to God can never be more intimate or grand. Heaven itself will not be beautiful if earth has not previously been so. 'It is a poor mistake to think that we compliment God's heaven by despising his earth, and that we best shew our sense of the great things the future man will do yonder, by counting as utterly worthless all that the present man can do here.'*

HINTS TO PARENTS ON THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF THEIR CHILDREN. (Continued from page 416.)

In the last paper on this subject, we demonstrated the uses of the rod in moral training. We showed that there are two ways of eliciting and of securing the child's obedience; the first, and by far the most desirable, is that of affectionate entreaty and remonstrance, or of love. This, indeed, is the power which must universally prevail in moral training; it is equally the same principle which should move the hand when applying the rod, as when caressing the child. This truth is involved in the divine declaration—“ As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." So that love, when necessary, assumes the appearance of severity. Let the child be accustomed to the truth, that it is not the love of the parent which causes the infliction of punishment, but the evil of the child's disobedience. For it is a principle in moral training, doubted and gainsayed by no one, that obedience must be secured in the child, otherwise there can be no basis for any thing good in the soul; there can be no love of the Lord as the child advances in age, no love of the neighbour, no true love of country; and nothing but selfishness, in every hideous form of tyranny and oppression, or of deception and treachery, can possibly appear in after life if obedience in childhood and

* Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, by T. T. Lynch.

youth has not been secured, as the universal ground of all the excellences of moral order, and of all the virtues and graces of the spiritual and the heavenly life.

There are, however, persons who are still vehemently opposed to the rod, (by which we mean restraining and controlling powers of various kinds,) as a means of moral training, and the only way to convince them of their error, as abstract argument, however well grounded in rational considerations, has no power over such fond and doating parents, is to show up the inconsistency of their objections by living examples, which, alas! are very numerous in the history of families.

We will, however, admit that were children born into the world according to the order of creation, that is, if they did not bring with them, as fallen beings, an hereditary evil nature, there would, we believe, be no necessity for the employment of the rod. Love would then, in the form of affectionate guidance and entreaty, be sufficient to lead the child to order and to heaven, without external castigations of any kind. It is, however, well known, that children are not born according to the order of creation, but that strong propensities to evil are innate in their constitutions; "they are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity;" and it is also known that this condition of our birth can only be changed by the application of a great variety of means, external as well as internal, in order that these hereditary dispositions may be broken, subdued, and finally yield to dispositions of an opposite tendency.

Examples of Inconsistent Objections to the Uses of the Rod in

Moral Training.

In a certain family, where the father had been appointed one of her majesty's justices of the peace, the eldest son, a youth about ten years of age, stole a silver spoon, which he sold for sixpence, with which he bought some marbles and apples. The spoon was soon missed by the parents; and the servants were arraigned, with threats that if the spoon were not speedily found a policeman should come and examine into the case. It was, however, discovered that the youth, the eldest son of the family, had stolen the spoon, and the parents were of course much concerned that their son had done this wicked act, which they were about to ascribe to some servant on whom their suspicions were fixed; and their concern was the greater, because it was not the first offence of the kind which the youth had committed. A judicious friend happened to be at the house when this occurred, and who was present when the boy was charged by the parents with the theft, which he at first denied, (for lying always accompanies theft,) but as the spoon had been traced, there was no possibility of evading it, and the lie did not answer the purpose. The parents, as usual, addressed the child in the soft accents of love,

expressing their sorrow that he had done this deed, and hoped that he never would do so again. The friend who was present, and who sincerely sympathized with the parents, thought that as this was not the first, or even the second offence of the kind, severer measures should be taken, to subdue the evil in the child, especially as he observed in his countenance that the loving remonstrance and entreaty of the parents had no deterring effect on the culprit, and that he was still selfcomplacent, and that when the temptation again occurred, he had nothing to fear from the loving and earnest remonstrances of his parents, who employed no other means in the moral training of their children. This friend advised that the rod should be used there and then as a deterring medium, and as a reminder, that when the temptation again occurred, the boy should be induced to resist and overcome it, even though it were from a fear of the punishment, rather than from a pure love of justice and honesty; "for," said he, "we are not led all at once to the love of pure goodness, it is only by degrees that we arrive at this exalted state; we must first be led away from evil rather by a fear of its consequences, than by a pure and exalted love of virtue and justice." The parents, however, did not admit the propriety and force of this reasoning, and they vehemently opposed their friend's advice, stating, that they never did use the rod, and that they thought it was brutal to use it in the training of children.

The friend, however, rejoined that true love to the child is in its nature spiritual, regarding truly moral and heavenly ends in respect to the child's real and eternal good, and that any other love of children was merely like that of the beasts which perish. For the tiger and the wolf could fondle their young with great affection, but that men in training their children were supposed, as rational and immortal beings, to have a much more axalted love of their offspring, and that this love should manifest itself not only in mere fondling, but in the endeavour to remove from them those evils which if permitted to grow, would destroy their true happiness, and make them eternally miserable; and that consequently to remove these evils, although the removal may, for the moment, cause some amount of unpleasantness and pain to the child, yet an exceeding amount of permanent joy and happines will assuredly follow. If a parent sees that a child's knee is inclined, from some cause or other, to contract a permanent stiffness, does he not gladly allow the doctor to apply severe and painful remedies to remove the stiffness, in order that the child may be preserved throughout life from the evil of lameness, which would deprive him of a great amount of comfort and happiness in this world? Now what the parent here gladly allows the doctor to do in order to make the child physically happy in this life, which continues only for a short time, surely he ought not to refuse to apply proper coercive and punitive measures to those evils of disobedience which make us lame, spíritually, in walking in the path of God's Commandinents. Now your child, by committing these acts of theft and lying, is not only lame, but he will have no strength whatever, as he advances in age, to walk uprightly in the ways of God's precepts, which are the only true precepts of moral order. This reasoning by analogy from the stiff knee, to the lameness

of the spirit in walking according to God's precepts, seemed, for the time, to strike the parents, and there was a pause in the conversation.

At this moment, the father, who, as we have said, was a magistrate, received a note by a messenger, summoning him to attend at the bench. He immediately prepared himself for attendance, and invited his judicious friend to accompany him. When they arrived at the court, a poor boy, about the same age as the magistrate's son, was brought to the bar, charged with having stolen, from a greengrocer's shop, a few potatoes. The culprit being convicted of the crime, was immediately sentenced by the magistrate to be severely whipped, and to have ten days' imprisonment. When they left the court the judicious friend observed to the magistrate, that he had soon settled the business with that poor boy for having stolen a few potatoes, and asked him why he had not acted in that prompt and summary manner with his own son, convicted as he was of having stolen the silver spoon? And why did he not apply his loveprinciple of training to the poor boy? The magistrate seemed struck with the question, and at first was a little puzzled to find what reply he should make; at length he said, that the laws of the country compelled him to punish the boy. Upon which his judicious friend rejoined, that the laws of the country were, in this instance, founded in justice, and that the true way of showing love and mercy both to the criminal and to the neighbour at large, is to endeavour to subdue and remove evil by suitable punishments; and that it would be contrary to the true love of the neighbour not to endeavour to remove evil by punishments, if required for that purpose; precisely as it would be wrong and contrary to real love in the parent not to endeavour to remove a stiffness in the knee, or some bodily defect, by suitable means, although, for the time, they might be distressing and painful te the child. The judicious friend then reproached the father with inconsistency in whipping and imprisoning the poor boy for having stolen the potatoes, and sparing his own son for having stolen a silver spoon; "and indeed," said he, very emphatically, "such a mode of moral training as you have adopted in your family is not only inconsistent, as you must now admit, but it is nothing but a peculiar form of self-love in the training of children, from which nothing good, either to the child or to the improvement of society, can arise; for you will agree, no doubt, that all improvement and progress in society at large must begin in the family circle. Therefore I predict, that except you change your mode of moral training, your son, some day or other, will scourge you with a 'whip of scorpions.' (1 Kings, xii. 11.)

And so it really happened, for the youth, at the age of sixteen, went to a situation in a mercantile house, where, on certain occasions, he had to collect accounts; and one day having a larger amount of money than usual in his possession, he embezzled it, absconded, and escaped in a vessel bound for Jamaica. The disconsolate parents thought of the prediction of their judicious friend, about the "whip of scorpions," for their minds were pierced with anguish at the thought of their son's delinquency, of his moral degradation, and of the disgrace brought by his conduct upon their name and reputation. They lamented bitterly that they had not more promptly and energetically

N. S. No. 168.-VOL. XIV.

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