ness, is poverty, is exposure to moral disease, is the absence of many of the highest enjoyments, is the obstruction of the purposes for which the beneficent Creator made man in His own image. Therefore, ignorance is an enemy to godliness, and a hinderance of salvation, as well as, in itself, a positive and mighty evil; and religion must long and labor to remove it from the path of society. To suppose that a Christian can be indifferent to the intellectual cultivation of his fellow-men would simply imply that he had no appreciation of its value for himself; for he must wish to communicate all which he prizes.

It is perfectly true, also, that even in the teachers of all secular knowledge, religious men will desire and prefer a spirit and principles like their own. A father who merely commits his son to the instructions of a writing-master, would rejoice to find in him a man of Christian worth, and would feel that the boy was somewhat safer. It is not possible, in any department of life, to exclude or neutralize the beneficial influence of the steadfast fear of God and the sincere love of mankind. The religious man or woman will always be, all other things being equal, unspeakably the better teacher, even of arithmetic or of needlework. Under any system of public education, however remote from a sectarian or exclusive character, this preference will be felt, and cannot be changed into indifference.

Under these systems the introduction of religious instruction, in combination with secular instruction, is relinquished, not upon grounds of abstract excellence, but upon those of convenience or necessity. Accordingly, either the system is not extended over the youngest or the oldest of those who are to be educated; or if it be, it does not command a general acceptance. The public school offers no urgent invitation to the child just rising from infancy; it leaves him, not unwillingly, to the gentle hands of his mother or of some maternal preceptress. At the other end of the course, colleges and universities are commonly allied to the Church rather than to the State. From the latter they accept aid; to the former they accord welcome intervention and an active control. Not merely financial or political considerations fix the limits of public educa tion on this side of the highest institutions of learning. For it is felt that all education must begin and end in religion; that the infant must learn the names of God and of the crucified Redeemer with his first accents; and that the young man should not go forth

into the world of professional study, action, and influence, without a settled faith. But between these two periods lies the time which public education appropriates; appropriates, simply because the interests of the commonwealth require the instruction of all in useful knowledge, and because no other power can furnish the means of such instruction for all alike.

If the task of religious education be then declined by the public teacher, it is left in hands which certainly are better fitted to execute it with dignity, with diligence, with fidelity, and with tenderness. It is in the hands of special teachers, whose labors are voluntary; of pastors; and of parents.

The Sunday School has become one of the institutions of society, wherever the English tongue is spoken. It enlists a body of teachers whose intelligence is animated by no other impulse than that of Christian love. They receive no hire, and they wield no instruments of discipline. They come to their pupils on they day which is consecrated to all holy works of piety and charity. There is nothing to disturb the pure influence of their instruction; no other studies crowding in; no intermixture of heathen mythology or abstract science; no hurry to the playground; no dread of the rod or superadded task; and none of those hereditary associations, which, absurd, unjust, and pernicious as they are, yet do still, more or less, connect themselves with the relation between the boy and the professional teacher. Love is the bond between those who teach and those who learn on the Sabbath.

When the pastor is the teacher, love is united with reverence. His office inspires that reverence, and his intelligence in sacred things merits a confidence which might elsewhere be less readily bestowed. The duties of pastors to the young may be but imperfectly undertaken, especially where the ancient and most useful custom of catechising has fallen into neglect. But it would still be great injustice to compare their influence with that of teachers who sustain no sanctity of office, have devoted no special study to sacred letters, and are not, in virtue of their office, supposed to be persons of piety.

But no teachers have an appointment more holy or divine than fathers and mothers. The cannot but educate their children religiously or irreligiously. No separation can take place in the training of home; for that is purely for the heart and soul; and its first and supreme end is the goodness of the child. He learns his

prayers on the knees of his mother; he is taught to examine himself at the close of each day; his conduct is, without ceasing, subjected to a watchful scrutiny; there is no vacation, no recess, no occasion when he is released from this supervision. These teachers have an authority, too, which, for him, is the direct interpretation of the will of his Maker. To the child, the voice of the parent is the voice of God; for so has God commanded. And all which he hears and learns from these sources comes to him as nourishment from the bosom of an exhaustless love, to which his childhood must cling as if it were to him the whole wide universe.

This is the provision which the Church and the family, with many collateral aids, assign for religious education. Piety in the public teachers, and religious truth in the common school, would be additional aids; but are they indispensable, or could their influence be weighed in the balance against all this? Whatever may be the excellence of many professional instructors, whatever their noble enthusiasm in their calling, it is not to be disputed, that, as a body, the teachers of public schools are governed, in the choice and pursuit of their occupation, by the same motives which incite persons of respectable and worthy characters in all departments of business. They engage in it for a remuneration; they abandon it when it becomes unprofitable; or they exchange it for positions which are more lucrative or more to their taste. They are not appointed, and cannot well be, for their personal devoutness. If they should teach religion, it would be as they teach grammar, not because the task is known to be enthroned in their affections, but because it is made a

part of their business. We do not disparage the transcendent beneficence and exalted piety of many teachers; but it is an accident, so to speak, whether these mark the character of an individual teacher; they are not and cannot be the distinguishing properties of a class selected as teachers must always be under any public arrangements. Little will it avail, that a cold, dry, unfeeling, and perhaps unbelieving teacher, consent to teach catechism, or to open his school with prayers. A truly religious teacher, even without those exercises, will leave some impress of his own spirit on the minds which he has assisted in forming and replenishing. This can be attained even now; and if any would avoid this, they must make piety a ground of exclusion from the office. The most determined unbeliever would hardly desire such an issue; but neither can piety be made a condition of admission, if it were even in our power to en

force the rules, since the talents and acquisitions which make the successful teacher are dissociated from it; and since, precious as it is, it cannot, in this position, be deemed one of the chief instruments on which the cause of religion must rely.

What, then, is the power which Christianity cannot, and what is that which it can, exercise in the system of public schools of a land like our own?

It cannot teach all its doctrines and laws, as they are held by any body of Christian believers.

It cannot blend religious truth with secular instruction, to any degree which implies the attempt to communicate systematic religious knowledge.

It cannot attempt to inculcate a religious character, or, in other words, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by precept and exhortation.

It can take for granted a general acquaintance, in the pupils, with the facts of Christianity, united with reverence for it as a Divine revelation.

It can infuse into the teacher, so far as he obeys it, a spirit which attracts to his religion, and inspires the desire to resemble its faithful followers.

It can afford a Christian view of every science and every department of knowledge, and show their connection with revealed truth in its great outlines.

It can inculcate the whole moral code of the Gospel, by rule and example.

It can exclude and counteract every influence of infidelity.

It can, in many instances, with the universal consent of the community, affix a more decidedly religious character to the school duties of each day, by the observance of daily prayers.

It can, with the same consent, introduce the Bible, and promote, by daily reading, the familiar knowledge of its contents; not as if it were a mere reading-book, though the best, but as the generally acknowledged word of God.

It can, with the same consent, which may generally be assumed, impress, as occasion is offered, all that great and priceless mass of truth in which all Christians are substantially united.

IV. MEMOIR OF NICHOLAS TILLINGHAST.

BY RICHARD EDWARDS.

Principal of the State Normal School at Salem, Mass.

[An Address delivered before the Annual Convention of the Graduates of the State Normal School at Bridgewater, Mass., on the 30th of July, 1856.]

FELLOW TEACHERS AND FELLOW PUPILS:

We have met in social and friendly gathering for many years. There are doubtless those here who formed a part of that small band, with whose help, the school of which we have been pupils, was first launched upon the voyage of its existence. Year after year, as occasion would permit, they with others have come up to this, the scene of their former labor, to feel the softening influences of early associations upon those hearts which the business and turmoil of life do so much to harden and deaden; or perhaps to renew here where they were first consecrated to a noble profession, their vows of devotion to its trying but exalting and responsible duties. Some of these occasions have been joyous. The familiar salutations of friends, from whom we have been for a season parted, the warm grasp of the friendly hand, the mutual recital of experiences, the sight of the well known village and its landscapes,-these have been the most prominent circumstances of a convention, and have forever associated with our gatherings the most gladdening recollections. there have been also times of sorrow. has not withheld his hand from ours. have been thinned by his unerring shafts. young, the promising,-those to whom we looked for noble deeds in the future, have fallen by our side, and we have mournfully betaken us to our journey alone.

But all has not been joy ;Death, that spares no band, Again and again our ranks One after another, the

But whatever change may have met our eyes here, we always, except on a single occcasion, until one year ago, were cheered by the countenance, and encouraged by the words of one whom we loved as our teacher, and venerated as a noble illustration of the Christian man. At our last meeting, we were informed that ill health kept him in a distant part of the State. To-day, we miss him again, and even the faint ray of hope with which we then solaced ourselves, has been extinguished. Our hearts are saddened by the knowledge that he has departed from our midst, and that while we continue bound