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so it is universally; no constraint is to be blamed as infrin on his happiness, or a harsh severity against his pleasures, w fact, all highest happiness and widest range of liberty dep the requirement imposed.

There is no pretext of authority in the Scripture for mak Lord's day, or Sunday, a Jewish day to children. And th rents who make it a point of fidelity to lay it on their child cording to the strict police regulations of the Jewish code. be much more orthodox, if they went farther back, and t conceptions of the day some thousands of years older. Whe assume that every thing which can be called play in a very child is wrong, or an offense against religion, they try, in make Galatians of their children; incurring a much harsher, tian rebuke, than if they only turned to the beggarly elements selves, and laid their own souls under the bondage. What poor child do, that is cut off thus, for a whole twenty-four from any right to vent his exuberant feeling-impounded, s in the house and shut up to catechism; or taken to church to fold his hands and sit out the long solemnities of the w and what to him is the mysterious lingo of preaching; ther home again to struggle with the pent up fires, waiting in drea forlorn vacancy, till what are called the mercies of the day are What conception does he get of religion, by such kind of ment, but that it comes to the world as foe to every bright th it; a burden, a weariness, a tariff, on the other six days of lit

But there comes in, here, a grand scripture reason for son of restriction, viz.: that restriction is the necessary first st: spiritual training every where. Instead of rushing into the sion, therefore, as many parents do, that all religious obser which create a feeling of restraint, or become at all irksome t dren, are of course hurtful, and raise a prejudice in their against religion, the Scripture boldly asserts the fact that a begins to be felt a bondage. Law and gospel have a natura tionship, and they are bound together every where, by a firm rior necessity. It is so in the family, in the school, and in re The law state is always felt to be a bondage, and the restric irksome. By-and-bye, the goodness of the law, and of the whom it is administered, is fully discovered, and the obedienc began a restriction merges in liberty. The parents are obeye

such care, as anticipates even their wishes; the lesson, that was a task, is succeeded by that free application which sacrifices even health and life to the eagerness of study; and so the law of God, that was originally felt only in the friction, rubbed in by that friction, is finally melted into the heart by the cross of Jesus, and becomes the soul's liberty itself. It is no fault then of a Sunday that it is felt, in some proper degree, as a restriction; or even that the day is sometimes a little irksome to the extreme restiveness of children. All restraint, whether in the family or the school, is likely to be somewhat irksome at the first. The untamed will, the wild impulse of nature, always begins to feel even principle itself in that way of collision with it. Nor is it any fault of the Sunday observance, that it has, to us, the character of an institute. If it were a mere law of natural morality, we might observe it without any thought of God's will; but if we receive it as an institute, we acknowledge God's will in it; and nothing has a more wholesome effect on just this account, than the being trained to an habitual surrender to what God has confessedly enjoined or instituted by his will. It is the acknowledging of his pure authority, and is all the more beneficial, when the authority is felt in a somewhat restrictive way. The transition, too, is easy from this to a belief in the supernatural facts of Christianity. The conscience and life is already configured to such faith; for whatever is accepted as an institution of God, is accepted as the supernatural injunction of his will.

The flash of judgments, therefore, of many, in respect to the observance of Sunday, are not to be hastily accepted. We are not to read the prophet, as if promising that the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, on the Lord's holy day, playing in the streets thereof; or as if that kind of license were necessary to clear the irksomeness of an oppressive observance; or as if the power of religion were to be increased by removing every thing in it, which disturbs the natural impatience of restraint. Some child that was, for example, now grown up to be a man-a profligate it may be, a sworn infidel, a hater of all religion-laughs at the pious Sundays that his godly mother made him keep, and testifies to the bitter annoyance he suffered under the irksome, and superstitious restrictions thus imposed on his childish liberty. Whereupon some liberalist or hasty and superficial disciple, immediately infers that all

the strictness of the Sunday observance. Perhaps the requ was really too restrictive, or perhaps it was so little and so u restrictive, as to make it only the more annoying. Be it as in this or any particular example, a true Sunday observanc to be restrictive in a certain degree, and needs to be felt way, in order to its real benefit. What is wanted is to hav will felt in it, and then to have it reverently and willingly ad A Sunday turned into a holiday, to avoid the supposed evi strictiveness, would be destitute of religious value for just that

The true principle of Sunday observance, then, appears this that the child is to feel the day as a restriction, and is so much done to excite interest, and mitigate the severitie striction, that he will also feel the true benignity of God in t and learn to have it as one of his enjoyments. When the very young, or just passing out of infancy, it will be enoug with some simple teaching about God and his day, a part more noisy playthings are taken away; or, what is better tha that he have a distinct Sunday set of playthings; such as m resent points of religious history, or associate religious ideas, ance of which can be selected from any variety store withou culty; then, as the child advances in age, so as to take t meaning of language, or so as to be able to read, the playthi the hands and eyes will be substituted by the playthings mind; which also will be such as connect some kind of re interest-books and pictures relating to scripture subjects, & tice in the learning and beginning to sing Christian hymns, c sations about God and Christ, such as bring out the beauty of feeling and character, and present him, not so much as a fri but more as a friendly and attractive being; for the child only scared by God's terrors and severities, will very soon lo all proportional conceptions of him, and will want to hear c no more. Even the Sunday itself that only brings him to will, for just that reason, become a burden. The endeavor be to excite a welcome. interest in the day and the subje recalls. * * Under such a practice, religion, or faith, will b en into the whole texture of the family life, and the house w come a truly Christian home. Nothing will be remember fondly, or steal upon the soul with such a gladsome, yet sacred ing afterward, as the recollection of these dear Sundays, when light shone so brightly into the house, and made a holiday for hood so nearly divine.

BACON'S ESSAY L. OF STUDIES.

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness,' and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for, expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience-for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: Abeunt studia in mores nay, there is no stond' or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought

1 Privateness. Privacy.

2 Make. Give.

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3 Curiously. Attentively. "At first I thought there had been no light reflected from the water. but observing it more curiously, I saw within it several spots which appeared darker than the rest."-Sir Isaac Newton.

and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, an like; so, if a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathen for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find difference him study the schoolmen, for they are 'cymini sectores;" if he apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one thing to prove and trate another, let him study the lawyers' cases--so every defect mind may have a special receipt.

This contempt, whether of crafty men or narrow-minded men, often fin expression in the word "smattering;" and the couplet is become alm proverb

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."

But the poet's remedies for the dangers of a little learning are both of then possible. None can “drink deep" enough to be, in truth, anything more very superficial; and every human being, that is not a downright idiot, taste.

It is plainly impossible that any man should acquire a knowledge of all t to be known, on all subjects. But is it then meant that, on each particular ject on which he does learn anything at all, he should be perfectly well infor Here it may fairly be asked, what is the "well?"-how much knowledge is called "little" or much?" For, in many departments, the very utmost had been acquired by the greatest proficients, a century and a half back short of what is familiar to many a boarding-school miss now. And it is 1 that our posterity, a century and a half hence, will in many things be just as 1

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1 Reins. Kidneys; inward parts. "Whom I shall see for myself, though my re consumed within me."-Job xix. 27.

2 Differences. Distinctions.

3" Splitters of cummin." Vid. A. L. 1. vii 7.