breast; and if I can but remove the dark side of the lanthorn, you have enough within you to warm yourself, and to shine to others. Remember, sir, your two boys are two bright stars, and their innocence is secured, and you shall never hear evil of them again. Their state is safe, and heaven is given to them upon very easy terms; nothing but to be born and die. It will cost you more trouble to get where they are; and amongst other things, one of the hardnesses will be, that you must overcome even this just and reasonable grief; and indeed, though the grief hath but too reasonable a cause, yet it is much more reasonable that you should master it. For besides that they are no losers, but you are the person that complains, do but consider what you would have suffered for their interest; you have suffered them to go from you, to be great princes in a strange country; and if you can be content to suffer your own inconvenience for their interest, you command your worthiest love, and the question of mourning is at an end. But you have said and done well, when you look upon it as a rod of God, and he that so smites here, will spare hereafter; and if you by patience and submission imprint the discipline upon your own flesh, you kill the cause, and make the effect very tolerable, because it is in some sense chosen, and in no sense insufferable. Sir, if you do not look to it, time will snatch your honour from you, and reproach you for not effecting that by Christian philosophy which time will do alone. And if you consider that of the bravest men in the world, we find the seldomest stories of their children, and the Apostles had none, and thousands of the worthiest persons that sound most in story died childless, you will find it a rare act of Providence, so to impose upon worthy men a necessity of perpetuating their names by worthy actions and discoveries, governments and reasonings. If the breach be never repaired, it is because God does not see it fit to be; and if you will be of his mind, it will be much the better. But, sir, if you will pardon my zeal and passion for your comfort, I will readily confess that you have no need of any discourse from me to comfort you. Sir, you have now an opportunity of serving God by passive graces; strive to be an example and comfort to your lady, and by your wise counsel and comfort stand in the breaches of your own family."

This letter of Jeremy Taylor is, to my mind, one of the most insipid and heartless effusions that ever flowed from his mighty pen. Evelyn was his friend and patron, and in the destitution to which Taylor was reduced, much like our poor Protestant brethren now in Ireland, that noble-minded and munificent layman felt it his greatest delight to minister to the necessities of his reverend friend. Yet what a jejeune performance is the above letter; a compound of bad conceits and worse theology. If the writer really felt on the occasion, his feeling did not prevent his playing with tropes and figures; with witticisms about grief propagating like fire, and joining two funeral torches to make a greater blaze. There is no comfort to a mourner in reading such trash as this. A page transcribed by a Sunday-school child, out of a "Christian Lady's Pocket-book," or Clarke's Promises, would have far outweighed these conceits and dainty imaginings of this Shakespear of theology. The best thing in the letter is the allusion to Evelyn's own remark, that it was the hand of God; the hand of a Father, whose very chastisements are in love; with the concluding exhortation to serve God by passive graces. How coldly do the reverend divine's conceits and antitheses fall on the ear after Evelyn's beautifully simple and affecting aspirations above quoted. Such a child I never saw! For such a child I bless God, in whose bosom he is! May I and mine become as this little child, which now follows the child Jesus, that Lamb of God, in a white robe, whithersoever he goeth. Even so, Lord Jesus; fiat voluntas tua! Thou gavest him to us; thou hast taken him

from us, blessed be the name of the Lord! That he had any thing acceptable to thee, was from thy grace alone; since from me he had nothing but sin but that thou hast pardoned; blessed be my God for ever. Amen." The theology of this last sentence is correct to a degree that might not perhaps have been expected. Evelyn says of this child, so dear, so amiable, so early devoted to God, that by nature "he had nothing but sin;" that all that was "acceptable in him," was from God's grace; but that his sin was freely pardoned, and that he was now following the Lamb of God, in that white robe which is the righteousness of the saints. Over a departed child, thus early instructed, and thus prepared, we may rejoice with a confident hope, which cannot be cherished by a scripturally enlightened mind merely as a tribute to the common-place panegyrics of innocence, and the fulsome topics of funereal adulation. It is not for any man to affirm what is the youngest age of moral accountableness; or how great are the mercies of God either to children or adults; but to say of a child even of "five years and three days," that he is sinless, is utterly unscriptural. Evelyn's theology was more correct, and his hope more just; " From me he had nothing but sin, but that thou hast pardoned."

I know not, my dear friend, that it is necessary for me to make any remark upon Evelyn's narrative, in its bearing upon the particular subject of these cursory reflections-precocity; since your mind will have suggested all, and more than all, that I could offer. I confess, however, that if I had not known beforehand that the child died in tender years, I should have concluded so before I had read half of the catalogue of his attainments; for as I before remarked, such a premature excitement of brain is in effect a disease, and is scarcely consistent with a due balance and healthy condition of the animal functions. I suspect also from the character given of the child's delicate beauty of person, that he was of that peculiar temperament of body which is connected with a morbid state of the glands; for, as is well known, the early victims of the distressing affections to which I allude, and many of whom die of pulmonary consumption, are often as premature in mind as they are sickly in body; and you are aware that every medical man who has written on disorders of this nature, mentions inordinate mental excitement and bodily inactivity as greatly predisposing to them. If you will turn to the Christian Observer, for 1824, p. 682, you will find Sir Astley Cooper saying that the system pursued in modern education of prematurely urging the mind, and forgetting the frailty of its corporeal tenement, is one chief cause of the prevalence of the painful maladies above referred to. In the case of girls in particular, he says that the overstrained attention and sedentary habits necessary for an early proficiency in what are called accomplishments, are a fruitful source of disease, deformity, and premature decay; more especially where the mind of the child is naturally forward, and the body delicate. "Girls," says Sir Astley, "are frequently compelled to sit from morning till night engaged in learning music, drawing, geography, French, nay even Italian, and I know not what else, without paying the slightest attention to the preservation of their health, and thus impairing constitutions which might have been rendered strong and robust....The mischiefs thus arising from the false system of education at present pursued in this country so frequently come before my notice, that I wish what I have said to be generally known, in order that future misery may be prevented, and the physical education of our youth be better directed.... I do not exaggerate, when I say that within this last year I have seen five hundred cases of scrofulous affections; never a day passes over my head without my seeing a case, and frequently three or four. This very day I have seen more; and if asked how many boys among them, I should answer not one. And what is the reason? Why, that boys will take exercise, and thus are

less liable to the complaint; whilst girls are not allowed, and therefore, if predisposed to it, are almost always attacked by it. . . . Air, exercise, and nourishment are the three great points to be kept in view in the treatment of scrofulous affections.".

Sir Astley Cooper here congratulates boys; but what would he have said if he had paid a morning visit to the family of Drusius or of Evelyn, and found a child scarcely out of arms poring over a polyglot of oriental languages, and relinquishing his bats and balls for the entertaining subtleties of masoretic punctuation? Evelyn feels great delight that his child was I far from childish :" but why should not a child be childish? there is no wickedness in being childish, any more than in being precose. A child ought to be childish; and if he be not, there is a defect either in his character or his education. Our Saviour himself took a child, and set him in the midst of his disciples, and told them that whosoever will obtain the kingdom of heaven must receive it as a little child; alluding, I suppose, chiefly to the simplicity of infancy. Evelyn's child was not altogether simple; there was somewhat of what was artificial, what was not natural to his years, mixed with his lovely character; and so far as this is indicated, it weakens our sympathy. When he asks, "if he might pray with his hands unjoined," he is altogether the child; his piety, his reverence for God, his tenderness of conscience, his willingness to bear inconvenience or pain where duty requires it, are thus incidentally evinced; while his scruple is so full of sincerity, that we sympathize while we smile at his simplicity. But when he deals in abstract truths, and lays down theological propositions, such as that "all God's children must suffer affliction," and when he "declaims against the vanities of the world before he had seen any," he is no longer a child of five years old speaking from his own simple feelings; he is either repeating by rote, or he has gained an early maturity of thought and an abstraction which are not natural, and are not of necessity religious. giving up his own little world for God, in bearing with meekness the afflicting hand of his heavenly Father, in expressing his reverence by wishing to assume the accustomed attitude of infantile devotion; and above all, in his simple and affecting prayer, "Sweet Jesus, save medeliver me pardon my sins-let thine angels receive me," he evidences an early growth of the spiritual affections; but in abstracting all this into theological propositions, he merely shews the prematurity of the mental powers, or more probably what he had heard and remembered. "My son, give me thy heart," as distinct from the mere exercise of the understanding, is the command of our heavenly Father; and in the case of little children, and often of older converts, the heart may be far in advance of the intellect.

In

I have said thus much lest I should have seemed, in my alarms concerning premature mental activity, to be censuring early piety. The two things are wholly distinct; except indeed, as true religion tends eminently to develop the intellect, and to raise it to its highest exaltation. But many children who have been far from shewing great cerebral development, have been early sanctified by the grace of God; and, to my mind, such children are a far more striking illustration of the power of religion, than those infant prodigies whose memoirs are so often held forth to public admiration.

Yet think not, my dear friend, that I would undervalue that inestimable gift of God-intellect. Every Christian parent would wish to see his children endued with fair, and it may be with bright, abilities; and it is a duty to cultivate them with reasonable assiduity; and, by the blessing of God, no evil but much good will arise from so doing. But how many languages, oriental or occidental, I should be glad to be informed, will compensate for a child being "liver-grown," (Evelyn's word is very

expressive, and speaks volumes,) and dying at the early dawn of his opening faculties? Surely here is a striking lesson of moderation to Christian parents; that in gratifying their own vanity, they do not macerate their beloved offspring. There is a lesson also of contentment for those parents whose children are the reverse of precocious; for if they ripen into well-informed and truly Christian men and women, the anxious parent will have no reason to regret that they did not carry half a score languages or accomplishments to an untimely grave. Had Richard Evelyn and young Drusius both attained maturity, I greatly doubt, whether at the age of thirty or forty they would have surpassed in intellect and attainments many far less hopeful pupils ; but I have no doubt at all but that their energy, both of body and mind, would have been so prematurely wasted, that they would not have performed in the actual business of life, or even of literature, one half of what has been accomplished by thousands of less promising scholars.

I think there is often a fallacy, if I may so express it, in the tears which are shed over the bier of precocious children, as if what had been taken away had a religious worth, which, as before remarked, does not belong to it. It is true that heaven is the region of light and knowledge; but it is far more eminently the atmosphere of love, and joy, and holiness; and though in our intellectual development we resemble, in a manner which the brute creation cannot do, the Image in which we were originally created, yet we also resemble condemned spirits, who did not lose intellectuality in losing the moral image of God; whereas in the spiritual exercise of the affections, grounded it may be on a very imperfect expansion of mind, we are like our Maker in the most exalted qualities to which human nature, sustained by Divine grace, can advance.

There is sometimes, I apprehend, no small measure of jugglery in the apparent precocity of children; it being merely the exercise of the memory while both the moral and the intellectual powers are very feebly expanded. The consideration of the latter defect (the intellectual) does not fall particularly within the train of religious allusion in his letter; otherwise I should trouble you with a few remarks upon it. For sure I am that there is not a more fallacious precocity than that which results from the mere exercise of memory. It is, indeed, an important part of education to communicate the knowledge of facts; but it is a much more important part to lead the youthful mind to reason upon them. But instead of this, the mind is often oppressed with aliment which is never digested or assimilated, and therefore does not minister to mental health and vigour. The exercise of the intellect, within due bounds, is of far greater moment in early life than indiscriminately tasking the memory. And it is with these faculties as with the bodily organs, that the too great use of one often weakens another. A boatman has the upper half of his frame firmly knit and powerfully developed; while the nether, for want of use, shrinks into feebleness. The same remark applies more or less to every trade, profession, and occupation of life. Thus in like manner, a child instructed merely by means of its memory, learns to neglect the use of its reason; and thus while it grasps facts it cannot rightly employ them. For ultimate effect, the basis of early mental vigour is a far more solid foundation than the accumulation merely by dint of memory, of the utmost acquisitions of science or scholarship. This matter is better understood now than it was formerly, and hence education is becoming less parrot-like and more intellectual; but much remains to be accomplished before the evil will be wholly remedied, more especially as stipendiary instructors find it more easy to make a child learn by rote ten pages than to teach it to understand one. But this, as I before said, is not our question, which concerns religion, not intellect. But even in what is called "teaching the truths of religion' CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 374. L

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the same defect too often occurs; the memory is overloaded, while the understanding is little exercised, and the affections are wholly untouched. I have been quite astonished at the magpie effusions of some quinquennial religionists; but there was as little of the head as of the heart in the performance. Had such a child died early, it would, perhaps, have been thought that he was precociously intellectual and early devoted to God; whereas he was a mere receptacle for the storing of words. Many of these words might afterwards be useful; and I would not absolutely say that we must never, on any occasion, teach a child any thing by memory which he does not at the moment perfectly comprehend: but my notion of what is scriptural and reasonable would extend a great way in that direction, if not to that precise limit; and sure I am, that wherever may be the exact line of division, the practice in many religious families is to exceed it. I have felt this even in reading such invaluable books as Janeway's Token above mentioned. Take from such narratives first, all that was remembered without being understood; and secondly, all that was understood without being felt; and both the religion and the precocity will be considerably reduced in magnitude. A wise Christian parent will be satisfied, if after a large deduction on the first two items, there remains on the third such a measure of true piety as may be effectual to salvation, though it may be of little value for biographical brilliance.

Thus have I run on with these cursory remarks. The sum is, that precocity is not to be desired, and that the tears shed on the graves of precocious children are often made more bitter by the mixture of other ingredients than those of simple parental affection. The parent thinks what such a promising child would have been; and secret disappointed vanity and self-love unconsciously add to the bitterness of his bereavement. It may console him to reflect that, very probably, his fond hopes would have been blighted; and that the blossom thus early stimulated would never have ripened into any extraordinary excellence of fruit; so that he has lost his child, not in his hour of promise, but in his early noon, from which his manhood would have been only decadence. But it should console him more to reflect, that even if those opening talents would have expanded to the gigantic powers of a Newton, and those early Christian virtues have been matured to the spiritual growth of an apostle, they have been enlarged immeasurably more in the heavenly world than they would have been here upon earth; and that so far from being nipped in the bud, they have only been transplanted to a more genial clime, where they could unfold for ever, watered from the fountain of Omniscient wisdom, and vivified by the direct beams of the Sun of Righteousness.

I am, my dear Friend,

Ever yours in Christian affection,

ON SEEKING RECONCILEMENT WITH AN OFFENDED

BROTHER.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THE REV. Mr. Bickersteth, in his excellent "Treatise on the Lord's Supper," p. 99, quotes from St. Augustine, with approbation, the following note on Matt. v. 23: "The precept is, if we call to mind that our brother hath ought against us; that is, if we have any way injured him, for then it is that he has something against us. For if he have injured us, then we have something against him; in which case there is no occasion to go to him for reconcilement. You would not ask pardon of the man who has done