could be by the change. The same salvation awaits you in eternity, not hindered at all by your erroneous belief. As to this life, you may enjoy the world no less by being restrained from those sinful excesses which mar all its enjoyments. And by applying with penitence to Christ for the remission of your offences, may enjoy surely as solid and satisfactory a hope of eternal life to cheer you amid present trials and the pangs of death, as you could by applying to yourselves the flatteries of an inevitable salvation. The latter might cost you many misgivings of conscience amid the bitter necessities of earthly trials and of death, to detract greatly from its worth; while the former would be placed on a foundation corresponding to the demands of the natural conscience, and acknowledged by all to be as firm as the promise and oath of God. Nothing is gained by a change in your belief then, if the sentiment of universal salvation is true. But if on the other hand it is false, you do, by the change, hazard every thing. For then, to say nothing of going to the bar of God with the guilt of denying His testimony, you throw off from your souls the burden of the motives which urge you to repentance in the present life, on which eternal salvation depends. And in whose case, think you, are the probabilites of a timely repentance the greatest? His, who sees in the indulgence of sinful pleasure no danger, little or no offence given to the Creator, and the security of eternal blessedness? Or his, who sees, in the everlasting punishments to come, the great evil of sin against his neighbor and God; the great compassion of God the Savior in dying to offer salvation, and the necessity of immediately resorting in penitence to His mercy for forgiveness? To whose heart will the Spirit of grace have the readiest access? That Spirit, speaking through Solomon, has already answered the question. "A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself; but the simple pass on and are punished." The man who descries the coming wrath, resorts to the Savior as his strong tower of defence in the day of judgment; but he who indulges his own heart in this life, regardless of the consequences, finds no shelter in that day from the consuming fires of divine vengeance.

While, then, you cannot possibly gain any thing by the change, you hazard by it the loss of the soul. You have but one soul, and will you thus foolishly hazard all its happiness?

And now, as we close our observations on this subject, we would say to those who believe in the doctrine of future punishment, that the weightiest motives are arrayed before their minds, which can be presented by their Creator, to induce them to make sure their preparation for an everlasting state.

For, the greatest of all questions is pending with each of you in this life, on your own concession: and that is, whether that immortal spirit with which the Creator has endowed you, =shall in the end prove to you the greatest of curses or the richest of blessings. The question is really pending. For, though you believe a curse has proceeded from the lips of God to reach every sinner in the universe, and fill with the pangs of endless remorse and despair the breasts of all who are unprovided with the shelter of a consistent redemption, yet not like the lost angels, are you left to inevitable woe. Though conscious of sin and exposure to the sentence of heavenly wrath, yet you have read the story of Him who dwelt in the bosom of the Eternal Father; how the yearnings of His compassion over a lost world moved Him to exchange the throne for a partnership with our sorrows, in order that He might carry our nature with Him to the cross; and bearing for us the indignation, might obtain for us the right to sit upon that throne as our Saving Prince and Judge, and send abroad through the earth to the penitent, the proclamation of forgiveness. "Whither He has gone ye know, and the way ye know," to reach that mansion of holiness and peace. The question then is fairly presented to you, by Him who is to be your final Judge,-and it is one on which you must act,-the question whether you will remain subject to the curse of your Maker, or accept and make sure the offered redemption?

And it is a question of no less importance than whether you shall render that immortal spirit of yours, the greatest of curses or the richest of blessings. For, look now beyond these circumstances of possible redemption in which you are living, and see what joys and sorrows there are in this universe, one or the other of which must settle down on that spirit forever. Look up to the joys provided for holy intelligences. There is a God glorious in might, and wisdom, and love, and worthy to be praised for all His doings, whom the spirit may fear and reverence. There is a Savior bearing the image of His Father's glory and the impress of our sympathies, whom the spirit may adore and love. There is a kingdom of holy and blessed beings, shielded and guarded by the government of God, in whose elevated society the spirit may forever partake. There are works of the Creator abroad, on which the spirit may muse with delight, and to which it may constantly repair for joy, as to fountains of living water. And in this heavenly banquet there are no ingredients of sorrow, but all tears are forever wiped away. And with all these joys offered to your acceptance, will it not, think you, if you secure redemption, be an unspeakable privilege to you that you have a

soul? And when it goes up to those sources of blessedness,— when the heavenly crown is put upon it, and when arrayed in white, it waves the palm of victory before God for the dangers past and an immortality secured, will you not have reason to bless your Creator, that he ever endowed you with capacities for joys so exalted and ennobling?

Look again, down to the sorrows of perdition. There is a world in exile from all the joys which are in God's presence and God's gift, where the desolate spirit must prey upon itself forever. There the fires of unbridled malice in surrounding companions, distract the never-dying spirit with terrors. There the recollection of happier days-the days of offered redemption wasted-fills the spirit with unavailing regret and remorse. There the prospect of unmitigated and unending sorrows, gathers on the spirit the blackness,and darkness of despair. And if you neglect offered redemption, and plunge your spirit into these torments, will you not mourn forever that you have a soul? Will not the heaviest curse that shall ever settle on your spirit be, that you have capacities which all the fires of that world cannot extinguish, which must exist and take in, at each moment of bursting agony, all the horrors that are past and are to come?

This question of everlasting interest is to be decided by you, in this short and uncertain life. You believe that as you accept or refuse redemption here-as you love your Savior or neglect him here-your state will be fixed forever. And is this life on which eternity depends, at all too long to devote to the great purpose of making your salvation sure? Can sinners be too early engaged in entering on their duty, or christians too vigilant in performing theirs? Is there any time which can be profitably withdrawn from the pursuit of an eternal calling, to be lavished on schemes of worldly ambition, or consumed in dreams of worldly pleasure? Remember, the hour is coming which is to try all hearts. We shall soon pass through the agonies of laying off this clothing of flesh and blood. And in that hour when we are on the farthest verge of life, conscience will try us; and the stirring question will meet us in our solitude, whether our eternal salvation is sure. We shall soon hear the trump of the archangel and be summoned before the Son of Man; and in that hour when no other probation can be granted, He who knoweth all things will try us; and the question be decided before a universe, whether we are to have any part in an eternal salvation.

"Wherefore, having received" the offer of an inheritance in "a kingdom which never can be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire."

ART. IV. THE FELLENBERG INSTITUTION AT HOFWYL.

[The following letter is from an American gentleman, who during a tour of a number of years on the continent of Europe for the purpose of visiting the most celebrated institutions of learning, has resided more than a year at the establishment of Mon. Fellenberg, in order to acquaint himself perfectly with the system of instruction there. In a future number we hope to present our readers with a detailed statement from the same source, of the whole course of regimen and instruction in that institution, which is generally admitted to be the most perfect of its kind on the continent of Europe.]

My Dear Friend,

HOFWYL, 1829.

I cannot better introduce you to this celebrated place of education, than by some account of the motives and views which actuated its founder.

Destined by his patrician birth to take part in the government of his native Canton, towards the end of the last century, Fellenberg's attention was early excited by the misery and vice which he observed around him; and he resolved to devote himself to the moral and intellectual reformation of his country.

The laboring classes he saw in a state of ignorance, which rendered them habitually indifferent to every thing but their animal necessities and enjoyments; yet capable of being excited and misled-equally fitted to become the instruments of licentious anarchy, or the slaves of despotism. He traced the origin of this state of things to the absence of all rational means of intellectual education, the exclusive attention paid to reading and writing as mechanical acquisitions-to the universally indifferent or technical manner in which moral and religious instruction was communicated, and the utter neglect of all efforts to cultivate moral habits, and to bring principles into action. It required but a glance at the higher schools and universities, to see how little was to be expected for the superior classes. A feeble body-a perverted understanding a false and generally corrupted taste-much ambition with some qualifications for shining in the world, these were the common results of the existing course of education; and rarely was it possible to discover any traces of a salutary or ennobling influence on the character and life. No hope could be entertained, that the higher classes, who alone possessed the means and the ability, would make any effort to redeem those on whose ignorance they considered their supremacy as reposing. Both high and low, in the view of Fellenberg, seemed destined to sink together. At a later period,

the illusive promises of philosophy were proclaimed and broken; and its influence in Switzerland went to inundate it with a flood of new errors and vices.

Fellenberg was convinced that every improvement must commence with the germ of society; that it was only in acting on the rising generation by improving the means of education that any hope could be cherished of improving its condition. He believed that the efforts made for this purpose must be directed, at the same time, towards the two extremities of the social body; and that it would be in vain to reform those who are destined to labor and obey, without improving the character of those who consume and govern. He believed that no attempt should be made to disturb the order of the community, by confounding classes of men whose lot a wise Providence had so widely separated; and for whose separate existence the various physical and intellectual qualities which He has bestowed, and the necessities of physical and social life, seem to form a permanent basis.

While he would anxiously endeavor to elevate those whose talents rendered them capable of it, to stations in which society could enjoy the utmost benefit from their efforts, he believed that with the mass of the laboring classes, the only rational course was to prepare them for the situation in which Providence had placed them, and to render them happy in it by raising them to their proper rank as rational and moral beings.

It was also of the first importance to establish new relations between the different classes of society. The poor must be led by a rational and religious education, not only to be content with their own station, but to receive the order of Providence which has assigned; and to see how unworthy of the understanding, as well as the heart that envy and jealousy is, which the lower classes are so ready to indulge towards the more favored. The rich must be taught to estimate the worth of industry, to feel how dependant they are upon the laboring classes, and to observe and revere the dignity of moral character which is often found among them.

An object of not less importance in the view of Fellenberg, was to correct that unchristian idea of the great world, that to provide for the present and eternal welfare of immortal beings by education, is an occupation beneath the dignity of the more favored classes. It was necessary, therefore, first to create an interest in the object, by showing how much good may be effected, how much happiness produced, and how much real enjoyment secured to him who becomes the instrument of such improvement. Practical demonstration was to be given of the importance of this to the higher classes, in pro