education is shaped accordingly. The child is taught to look upon certain objects in this life as his supreme good, and the strongest possible motives are urged on his mind to induce him to pursue them with the utmost ardor. His pride, his avarice, his love of personal aggrandizement, are called into early and constant exercise, in order to form those principles of action, which in the parents' estimation are essential to success in life. Under this discipline, he becomes a little worldling before he knows the meaning of the term; and all the parents' influence, both of precept and example, is afterwards employed in shaping and strengthening the character which they have been so successful as to form in the period of early childhood. The consequence is just what, under the circumstances, might be expected. The depraved propensities of human nature in the child are well adapted to give efficiency to such treatment. His choice fastens on the world, and his plan is formed to secure that portion which he has chosen. His purpose is intensely fixed, to pursue a course of self-gratification and aggrandizement, and no ordinary means will overcome his selfishness and lead to right principles of action. God and his government, the soul and its eternal destinies, are forgotten; moral obligation is kept out of view; conscience loses its susceptibility; the mind is blinded, and the moral being becomes a low and groveling animal, without any lofty aspirings after true glory or immortality. Such, we fear, is the kind of education, to a great extent, prevalent in our country at the present day. But how totally at variance is this with duty! how utterly opposed to the divine requirement, that children should be trained up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord! how destructive to the happiness of those concerned, both here and hereafter!

Let every parent educate his offspring for God, and not for this world. Let his first lessons of instruction be of such a kind, as to turn the infant heart to its Father in heaven,-as to make it feel moral obligation. Let the child be taught that he is not his own, but that he is bound to glorify God in his body and spirit which are his. Let his parents surrender him up to his rightful owner and prepare him for his service. Let them refer all their plans respecting him to the divine will, and regulate their conduct toward him, with the abiding conviction, that they are the stewards of the Lord, intrusted by him with the care and education of their offspring. Then will the world be made to take its proper place, and parental counsel, and parental discipline, and parental influence, all combine to train up a generation for usefuluess in this life, and for blessedness in the life to come.

2. It is a great fault with many parents, that they underrate the importance of the education of their children, and form too low an estimate of the greatness and difficulty of the work.

Some seem to suppose, that very little attention on their part to the mental and moral culture of their offspring, is sufficient for all the purposes of education. They appear to imagine, that the child will grow up, of his own accord, intelligent and virtuous, and that left to himself and to the influence of circumstances, he will acquire such habits and form such a character, as will best fit him to act an honorable part in life. A little occasional counsel or correction at most, is all that is needed. No special pains are requisite to check his propensities, to restrain his appetites and passions, and to govern and direct his will to the choice of suitable objects of pursuit. Entertaining such views, or at least acting under such impressions, parents often attach an inferior importance to domestic education, and overlook the greatness and difficulty of the work. Hence their sense of parental obligation is diminished. They have little disposition to engage faithfully in the discharge of their duties. They allot but a small portion of time to the instruction and discipline of their children. They leave them to form their purposes, and consequent habits, under the promptings of a depraved nature, without proper check or restraint. The child begins to act in obedience to wrong propensities, while the parent takes little pains to implant feelings and principles which are right. He grows up a narrow-minded selfish being; and it is well, if thus left to himself, he is not educated for profligacy and ruin, to bring both his father and his mother to shame.

Every parent ought to feel, that the training up of his offspring to proper mental and moral habits, is a work difficult, responsible, and of sufficient importance to engage his chief attention and care. He ought to be thoroughly impressed with the greatness of the obligations which devolve upon him, and with constant vigilance and unremitted effort, endeavor to come up to the full measure of his responsibilities. For his encouragement, he has a right to expect the blessing of God on his exertions, and to hope for success in educating the immortal souls committed to his care.

3. Another defect in the education of children, and the last to which we shall refer in this article, results from the character of the parents themselves.

There is often a failure on the part of the good and virtuous, to exhibit at all times in the presence of their families, right feelings and principles, and to maintain in all things a consistent example. The best of parents sometimes err; but many, who have a just claim to moral worth, are in part under the influence of passion, prejudice and unholy desires. They take a wrong view, and form a wrong estimate of things. They set their affections on wealth, or popularity, or worldly pleasures. They have selfish feelings, are sometimes envious, occasionally passionate, and not unfrequently appear to great disadvantage, as it regards their real

character. These things are perceived by children at an early age; and though they may be condemned as wrong, nevertheless they have their influence on their education. They often do away the effect of many salutary counsels, and weaken the moral power of the parent. The child begins to think, that he is excusable for imitating parental example, though precept, and instruction, and conscience too, are opposed to it. If the father's principles are wrong, this is an excuse, and not unfrequently an occasion for embracing the same principles. If the mother exhibits improper feelings, they are authority for an indulgence of the same. If parental example is sullied with many dark spots, the shade of these will be darker as they are reflected on the infant mind, and through childhood and youth, obscure the light shed upon it from other sources. But what shall be said of the example of vicious parents, as influencing the character of their offspring? Can the children of the profane, the intemperate, the licentious, be trained up to virtue and fitted for usefulness? Not without counteracting influences, sufficient to destroy the pernicious effects of parental example. Unless much greater moral power can be brought to bear upon their case, multitudes, of succeeding generations, must follow the steps of those who are the pests of society and their own destroyers. Toward these, let the sympathies of the church be directed. Let them be brought under religious instruction in sabbath-schools, and in the house of God. Let them be pledged to temperance, and let all proper means be used to make them virtuous men and good citizens. Finally, let it be remembered, both by parents and all others, that, upon the education of youth, the destinies of this nation depends; and not only the destinies of this nation, but the salvation of the world.

ART. V.-INFLUENCE OF RELIGION UPON THE HEALTH.

Observations on the Influence of Religion upon the Health and Physical Welfare of Mankind. BY AMARIAH BRIGHAM, M. D. Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon.

How delightful the ease with which this tribe dispatch every thing! They will prove a servant for you in two minutes, better than all the testimonials in the world. Their thumbs will solve you in a breath the guilt or innocence of a culprit, more certainly than the twelve wits of a jury could do it in a week. They will tell you what is in your child's head, as easily as they would tell a good egg; and by what sort of incubation you may best hatch the thing, they will as easily tell you, for they have science of education also in their fingers. And then, in mind itself and morals, where philosophers have toiled so vainly at the mystic depths,why, they will show you in a short space every thing there is in

man, even the whole thirty-five things, and tell you within half an inch the precise corner of the soul they are in. And what is better than all, they will make you philosophers without thought, and christians without repentance,-every thing is to them so easy.

Here is a book in the same delightful strain. Never before did author accomplish so much in three hundred pages, and with such infinite ease and satisfaction. Besides telling us how to be just religious enough to be healthy and wholesome to God, which is certainly no inconsiderable task in itself, he has accomplished many other things that are well-nigh prodigious. Historically, he has given us the records of religious madness and extravagance, as seen in the rites and manners of every sect, of every god, in the world. Philosophically, he has taught us, that all these come of that hateful bump of reverence, so unfortunately stuck on the apex of man. Philologically, he has shown us, that fasting, the Lord's supper, baptism, and the special agency of the Holy Spirit, besides being unhealthy, are contrary to the bible. And practically, he has told the people how preferable are ministers of the lymphatic temperament, how often it is best to hear them, and how far to regard what they say; ministers, also, he has told what books to read, how to interpret scripture,what, and when, and how, and how much to preach; and all this, reader, without difficulty, and with half the thought it would have cost some men. On the memorable 185th page, he does for once record his "deep embarrassment"; but then, as he would seem to inform us, rather in the way of saving our astonishment, than because he could not see his way with perfect satisfaction.

To speak more seriously, this is a most extraordinary book; not because of the facts it contains, for these, many of which have been contradicted, were mostly familiar before; but for the almost ludicrous effrontery with which the author enters upon things which his mind has never digested, and the air of authority with which he noises the opinions of men, in matters of which he has no insight whatever. It is precisely the book, however, that we have been wishing to see; because it is in every respect a fair exhibition of the phrenological doctrine and spirit in reference to religion. It has been much insisted on by some of the teachers of phrenology, that it has no irreligious tendencies; perhaps having been men of religious habits before they took up the subject, and so having never felt the proper and legitimate effects, they have even been so far deluded as to fancy, and soberly to argue, after their fashion, that it would be an important aid to religion. Very few men are competent to seize upon the moral tendencies of a philosophical system, and therefore many true christians have too hastily credited the shallow but somewhat plausible evidence of

the "science." Indeed, there is something very fascinating to a certain class, in seeing a geography and atlas of the faculties, that they can understand! That looks like philosophy! and though a man is certainly no wiser for being told that he thinks a certain thing at a certain spot on the map of his brains, than he is to know that he thinks it with his mind; yet the mass are wonderfully tempted, when they can put their finger on the very spot, to forget that they can only know what and how they think by thinking. We have therefore been hoping to see a true exhibition of phrenologized religion, or, if it should so fall out, christianity; well knowing that this would do more to open the eyes of the public, than the most labored proofs of the sensuality and inherent infidelity of the doctrine. It was necessary that the legitimate effects of the doctrine should be seen; and perhaps it is not amiss, that they may be seen on a mind rather superficial; for it is not philosophers who need to be guarded by such an example. Furthermore, the practical tendency of any sect is more completely exhibited when it takes possession of a mind destined to borrow its materials; for then, no largeness of view or inward force overleaps the narrow confines of error and remains unsubjected, to temper or soften the natural and legitimate effects.

In this point of view, or, as a witness for the phrenological spirit, the work of Dr. Brigham has a degree of importance, to which it is by no means entitled by the gravity of its materials; and it is in this point of view only, that we volunteer a mention of it in our pages. We do it, not so much with a design to refute its doctrines, as to show from it the proper caliber and spirit of the " new science," when brought into the province of religion. Here, doubtless, is the weak side of a philosophy eminently weak every where.*

* We are tempted to subjoin, as it may be long before we notice phrenology again, the substance of a few notes which it occurred to us to make, when reading the late work of Combe. It is very evident that this science cannot (as distinctive) teach us what we think; for that must be found out by thinking, and not by sight or touch. Neither can it tell us how to think, or give us the law of intellectual or moral development.

If it have any peculiar value, it rests in this, that it gives the character inwardly from external examination of the head. What, then, we inquired, is the probability that this doctrine, when applied in a given case, affords a true result? We were struck on observing the immense number of concurrent chances necessary to a true result, some of which we noted down. As the popular mind is not sufficiently aware how improbable an event may be, which depends on the concurrence of many events that are even probable in themselves, we venture to construct the following table or estimate.

:

1. There is the chance that the doctrine be correct, viz. that the faculties given as elementary be true elements; that they be all the elements, (as they must be if "combination" only is to adjust a sound result,) and that all the elements be rightly assigned to their place in the brain. We mean to be very courteous, -say then, though it make fools of all the philosophers that ever lived before, that the chance is in their favor as nine to ten.

2. The chance that one who is to apply the doctrine have good form, size, and