be particularly required of her, a neat mode of repairing linen and making her own clothes. She may be able to read her Bible; but unless she has met with instruction from some other source than her school, she will seldom do so, because her mind has been so little cultivated; and she may possibly have the comfort of being able to communicate with her friends, by having been taught to write. But in what respect does she possess any advantage which the girls from the National Schools do not equally possess? And if not any, why should the societies contribute so much, and perhaps, also, have given their me and attention to their little establishment? If it is replied, that these schools were founded before the National Schools were thought of, and that, having subsisted so long, it would be a matter of regret to relinquish the old custom ; or if it is considered that the class of children who go to them rank rather higher in society than those who attend the larger establishments, and are therefore conveniently separated; or if it be observed that the care of these schools link in the most agreeable way the members of the society together, giving to the rich a common interest, and making rich and poor feel as one family when they assemble for public worship; or that they are desirous of keeping in their society those whom they can influence and guide to the adoption of such views as these individual societies believe to be the truth; then every motive which induces us to keep up these establishments, (except the simple one of continuing them because they are of long standing,) might stimulate us to a desire of greater moral good and usefulness in the mode of conducting them. It seems that the qualities and powers of mind most desirable for the well-being of the labouring classes, including house-servants, are those of a quick perception, present attention, with ready memory and discrimination. For the cultivation of these powers of the mind, it appears desirable that their time should be so fully occupied as not to admit of passive insensibility, nor of trifling and careless habits. It is next to be considered how, during the six or seven years which they spend under the care of these societies, their time could be suffi ciently occupied to call out and keep in exercise these qualities. It must, doubtless, be according to the circumstances under which their still earlier education began; for if this earlier period was passed in the listlessness of neglected helplessness, (owing to the necessary avocations of the parent,) or under the injudicious controul of those who rather needed guidance than possessed the means of guiding, the faculties of the mind would be necessarily much slower in their developement than under more favourable circumstances, especially as the temper would also require more regulation to prevent its impeding the progress of the mind. But why consider what pursuits would best befit them, when the difficulty is solved by the motives given for keeping up these establishments? The children are thought to rank somewhat higher in life than those of the other schools. If so, give them, then, more knowledge; let them have more to raise them above mere objects of sense; and if you wish to retain them hereafter in your congregations, if you wish them to have with yourselves the same hopes, the same religious views, teach them the reason of the faith that is in them; and if you would have them join with you in your worship here, that they may partake of blessings hereafter, then teach them, also, every moral and religious duty, inquire respecting them at their homes, teach them the law of kindness among each other, and every where lead them to submit their wills to the will of their heavenly Father. Let the concern be to cultivate every social and religious duty in sincerity: and then, whether they have attained much knowledge, or little knowledge, so as they have in the cultivation of their minds acquired habits of industryevery apparent object in the Congregational Schools will be obtained, and it appears there will be reason to hope such education will help to fit them for the purposes of life to which it may please the great Father of all to destine them. W. Belief of the Patriarchs and Israelites in a Future State. (Continued from p. 144.) and emphatic: "If thou seest oppression and violent perversion of judgment, marvel not; for He that is higher than the highest regardeth it, WHETHER the history of Job and there be higher than they. Re joice, O young man, in thy youth, &c., but forget not that for all these things" (if misapplied and abused) "God will bring thee into judgment." And he sums up the whole in these remarkable words: "For God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." be a real or a fictitious one, the moral philosophy to be derived from it is the same: some parts are evidently figurative or dramatic. We may have heard in Christian pulpits portions introduced from this book, as indicative of the writer or the hero's disbelief of a future state. "There is hope of a tree-but man goeth down to the grave, and where is he?" But this is wresting the Scriptures," and not explaining them; it is quoting imperfectly, or by halves, without regard to the connexion; and, therefore, such arguments are built only on the sand. "Man," says Job, "lieth down and riseth not again, till the heavens be no more;" till then " they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep. If a man die, shall he live again?" No, certainly, not in this world; but what follows? "All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come!" But there are other passages still more explicit, without alluding to that controverted text, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Job had, upon the whole, comfortable views of the Divine providence and government, which convinced him that "the righteous should hold on his way, and he that had clean hands should wax stronger and stronger" and induced him to cry out, in the midst of his sufferings, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" This text alone is in itself "an host." Solomon, though not a prophet, was endowed with extraordinary natural powers; and, in his bright and golden days, was furnished with the most copious stores of religious wisdom. In his beautiful personification of this divine quality, Prov. viii. &c., he says, "Whoso findeth me, findeth life." In ch. xxiii., denouncing those remove the ancient land-marks, and enter the fields of the fatherless,' he observes, "Their Redeemer is mighty, he shall plead their cause with thee" and in ch. xiv. 32, "The righteous hath hope in his death!" In the book of Ecclesiastes, generally supposed to have been written by him, and of which it bears the strongest internal testimony, he is more precise tion. that " But, in this view of the Old-Testament writers, David appears with a peculiar lustre. Thus, in a serene and silent midnight sky, though every star shines with a distinct flame, yet some emit a more vivid brightness, and irresistibly attract the eye of the beholder: hence the pious hymns of the royal poet will remain among the chief standards of a rational and sublime devotion to the end of time. "To the poet," says a modern lecturer,*-"To the poet ever remain the lovely forms of animate and inanimate nature; all that is interesting to humanity, to sympathy, to imagination. While there is a star in heaven, it shall speak to the poet's eye of another and a better world. In poetry is to be found a reservoir of the holier feelings of our nature. It is as a robé of light, spread over the face of things, and investing them with super-human splendour. There is in poetry a sort of intrinsic revelation, leading man to consider this existence as the wreck of other systems, or the germ of a future being!" But the Psalmist of Israel was a prophet as well as a poet and a philosopher; hence he became eminently qualified for the most profound researches into the history of Providence, the works and ways of the Almighty; for magnifying his name and celebrating his praises; and in this delightful work, when loosed from the bondage of iniquity, and rejoicing in a sense of the Divine favour and acceptance, he pours out his soul before him in the most ecstatic transports, and calls upon universal nature to unite with him in the great design, But the powers of language are exhausted before him in the prosecution * Mr. Campbell, at the Royal Institu of the mighty theme! Yet what he can do he will endeavour to perform; he will transfer, in immortal strains, from the table of his heart, to succeeding generations, the praises of the Most High; and call upon "all flesh to bless his holy name for ever and ever." : Mr. Addison observes, that the passages in Psalm xvi., relating to the Messiah, "had a present and personal sense, as well as a future and prophetic one" for though David himself" fell on sleep and saw corruption," yet he could not consider this event as final and irreversible, for he immediately adds, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore," therefore "his flesh did rest in hope." And if all this should be referred to the Messiah alone, it would be strange, indeed, if the Psalmist, who had such clear views of the Messiah's being raised to an immortal life, should nevertheless conclude, that this great future Prophet and Restorer, the hope and consolation of Israel," so long waited for, should himself prove only a single and solitary instance of the Divine power and goodness in this respect; and all the people of God besides, from the beginning to the end of time, should lie down for ever in the land of silence and forgetfulness! The ideas are so absurd and incongruous, that they will not bear a moment's discussion; especially when in other psalms he is as precise and determinate on this point as words can well admit of. Depart from evil and do good, and dwell for evermore.-Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth I can desire besides thee! My flesh and my heart shall fail, but thou art the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me!Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints!-I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy like ness!" Thus it appears, as it should seem, that there are sufficient evidences in the Old Testament to prove, to the satisfaction of any reasonable inquirer, that the ancient fathers of the primi tive church, and their successors, believed in and expected a future state; and if the comparative silence on this important subject in the Jewish Scriptures be objected, it may be replied, (besides observing, by the way, that we are to find our religion, and not to make it,) that we are not to reject any doctrine or opinion, reasonable in itself, and honourable to the Supreme Being, on account of a comparative, or even an absolute silence in the sacred writings. We know little from the Bible of the state, the numbers and the orders of angels; yet who can doubt of their existence, and of their important services in the creation? A scale of beings above us, supposing the use of our faculties, being almost an intuitive proposition; as a scale below us is a matter of fact and experience. We know nothing, from this source, of the plurality of worlds; but every Tyro in modern philosophy can almost demonstrate the fact. And who will say, it is not as reasonable that there should be a future state, as that there should be superior orders of intelligent beings, or a plurality of worlds in the regions of immeasurable space? Doubtless, there were sceptics in the primitive churches, as well as in our Saviour's time, "who said there was no resurrection, neither an gel nor spirit;" and who, with the rebellious Israelites, in the days of the prophet Malachi, said, "It is in vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and walked mournfully before him?" But, in such evil times, "They that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name; and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels, and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not." But the New Testament places this subject in the most convincing point of view, so that "he may run that readeth." Our Saviour, alluding to the prophecies concerning himself, refers the unbelieving Jews to their own Scriptures, in which also they pro fessed to find " eternal life;" and he does not deny the inference: on the contrary, concerning a resurrection, he observes to the Sadducees, that Moses himself "shewed it at the bush, in calling the Lord the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob; for he is not the God of the (finally) dead, but of the living, for all live to him." These passages need no comment: and in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the writer, enumerating the triumphs of faith in the ancient world, represents the OldTestament saints as looking through the present transitory scene, "for a better country, that is, a heavenly" and he emphatically declares, that the only faith which can please God is that which leads not only to a belief in his existence, but also in his character and government, as "a re warder of those that diligently seek him; and he insists that the primitive believers possessed this divine principle; that they "all died in faith;" not, indeed, having received the promises, but seeing them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, confessing themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth." The notion which we have here endeavoured to disprove, hath called forth the animadversions of many eminent divines. Mr. Robinson, in his Notes on Claude, (ed. 1779, p. 132,) says, "The present times have scarcely produced a more absurd and dangerous error than that of Bishop Warburton; who affirms, that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did make a part of, the Mosaic dispensation."" After citing some of the texts above-named, and making a few remarks, not very creditable to the sin cerity of the learned prelate, he gives some extracts from eminent foreign writers, in favour of the contrary opinion; namely, "That the patriarchal religion included the doctrine of a future state that the Mosaic economy included the patriarchal religion: that the apostles preached what was written in the law and the prophets,' and was believed by the bulk of the Jewish people (Acts xxiv. 14, 15); that the promise of the Messiah alone included all spiritual blessings, and that the Israelites understood it so: that God made the Old-Testament saints fellow-heirs with the New-Testament believers, and that it is senseless and wicked to set the two dispensations at variance. Jesus Christ, far superior to all human glory, was known and celebrated long before he came into the world. His magnificence is of all ages. The foundations of his religion were laid with those of the world; and though not born till four thousand years from the creation, yet his history begins with that of the world. He was first preached in Paradise, the subject was continued down to Moses, and revealed still more frequently and more clearly during the reign of the law and the prophets. Behold, before his birth, the titles of his grandeur! Jesus, above all Jesus crucified, throws the brightest light upon the Old Testament. Without him the law would be a sealed book; and Judaism a confused heap of precepts and ceremonies, piled up without meaning. On the contrary, how beautiful is the history of the people of God, and all their worship, when the cross is the key! It is one whole, the different parts of which relate to the same end. It is a long allegory of Divine wisdom. It is an edifice which God himself hath founded and insensibly raised, with a design of placing upon the top the cross of his Son!" Let us not, therefore, represent the God of grace," the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as in opposition to the God of nature, or to "the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob;" for these "are not three Gods, but one God,"---one in name, one in nature, one in person, one in power and glory! Who, though he varies his dispensations to his rational offspring, according to their different situations and circumstances, talents and capacities, which are ordered "after the counsel of his own will;" is himself" without variableness or shadow of turning!" Who" hateth nothing which he hath made;" nor expects "to reap where he hath not sown, or to gather where he hath not strewed;" with whom is "no respect of persons," but who "judgeth according to every man's work;" and who, with regard to the leading and essential principles of all true religion, "hath never left himself without wit 66 enness;" but, in different degrees, lighteneth every man that cometh into the world." AN OCCASIONAL READER. SIR, A Kidderminster, LTHOUGH I entertain a very learning, judgment and integrity, and that it is a compilation of different to state the view I entertain of the first An attention to this chapter, with a desire, I own, to retain it as a valuable and important part of the Holy Scriptures, has led me to believe that it is a mistaken sentiment, though commonly conceived, that the process represented to have been the employment of six days, includes the primitive creation of the world, which appears to have been prior to their commencement. In the first sentence of the chapter we read, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, or the luminaries of the etherial space, usually termed the firmament, (but in a sense different from the etymology of this word,) and this terraqueous globe. Understanding the word beginning to mean anterior to the measured time of this world, the sentence appears to be a proem to what succeeds, and entirely distinct from it, declaring all the existing worlds in the universe to be the product of God's almighty power in a former period, without stating the mode in which the creative energy was exerted, or the duration of the process; which, for aught we know, may have comprehended millions of such spaces of time as we denominate ages. If what is contained in this declarative introduction were included in the narrative of six days, then the natural order would have been to begin with a particular representation of the heavens, or hea venly luminaries, as having been first mentioned, and as claiming priority in the account for their stupendous grandeur; whereas it begins with the |