of this, we need only instance the very few words comparatively which wholly illiterate persons employ, and the still smaller portion which the children of such persons are conversant with. It is clear that such persons cannot do justice to their thoughts and sentiments, and are in no condition to improve them by interchanging them with others. Observe in what a variety of senses certain colloquial phrases are employed by such persons. It is said that the verb to fall has in English sixty-four distinct senses. But

we believe that there are some colloquial phrases peculiar to certain districts, which, if critically defined in all their senses, would be found to have, in the mouths of the people who employ them, sixty-four times sixty-four varieties of application.

We often hear a great deal in the present day about conveying ideas to the pupils-storing their minds with ideas, &c., &c. But we are free to confess that we think the improvement of the pupils' language is a far more important part of the teacher's duty. When the teacher has done his best to store his pupils' minds with ideas, he will find that all that he has been able to contribute to their stock, compared with what they have acquired from every-day life and other sources, is but as a drop in the ocean.

"Let us then," observes Locke, "suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in a word, from experience. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself, Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."

There is an intimate connexion between language and thought, and no one can really improve his language, without at the same time improving his thoughts. In corroboration of this view of the matter, and as a further illustration of it, we may be permitted to cite the opinion of Isaac Taylor, expressed in his "Home Education." "Words," says he, "are our guides and our goads in seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, with discrimination. Words are the stimulants of perception, the indicators of the less obtrusive class of facts. There are many thousands of appearances in nature-there are innumerable varieties of figure, motion, colour, and texture which would never arrest the eye, and of which we should take no sort of

cognizance, if we had not first come to the knowledge of the word which notes the particular phenomenon, and hence been led to look for its architype in nature."

To understand what I mean, it must be borne in mind that the entire vocabulary of words relating to the visible appearances and sensible properties is, if we speak of it in the mass, a record of general facts cognizable by the human mind through the senses. And whereas any one human mind, however nice in its perceptions, or exact and excursive in its habits of observation, never takes account of more than aportion-probably a very small portion-of the sensible qualities and shades of difference which are actually cognizable by man, a copious and refined language, such for example as our own, contains the recorded notices of thousands of minds, and of minds of all classes, and of all degrees of precision.

By way of illustrating this, let us take for an example the description of the sea and sky in a storm, which would be given by a landsman of ordinary sensibility and ordinary acquaintance with language. Such a description would well enough convey a general idea of the scene in its broader features. But next let us ask the poet, whose eye has a peculiar regard to the sublime and beautiful, and whose vocabulary contains a far more extensive assortment of terms, to take up the same theme, and we shall find that he has not merely associated many fine sentiments with the objects before him, but that he has observed and noted many physical circumstances of the scene that had altogether escaped the vulgar eye :-he has in fact seen what the other saw not.

We have not, however, yet done; for if we go astern, and enter into talk with the old mariner who holds the helm, and get him freely to employ his slang terms in describing a gale of wind, we shall again be met, not merely by a new set of words, but by a new class of observations, so peculiar, as not to have been regarded by the poet or the painter.

And now if we take the entire compass of phrases, employed by the common observer-the poet-and the old sailor, and expunge the few that must be considered as strictly synonymous, and undistinguishable in sense; then the copious collection will constitute a fair vocabulary corresponding with nearly the appearances that are cognizable by the human eye during a sea storm.

In short, to learn the meaning of all descriptive terms, whether common, technical, poetical, or scientific, is to furnish the mind with a museum of specimens containing whatever the most practised eyes have descried on the face of the natural universe.

The above illustration relates to descriptive phrases only; but it is obvious that the same argument applies with equal force to language of a different kind.

We think it very important, in an educational point of view, that the youngest pupils should have their minds directed to the meaning of the language that is brought before them in their lessons, even in the earlier stages of their instruction. Nothing tends more to deaden and stultify the intellect, than to allow children to read and repeat language to which they attach no meaning, or an incorrect one. For the instant that with certain combinations of signs, or words, the child associates merely certain sounds, then may the mind lie dormant and the thoughts wander, for reading is no longer a mental but a mechanical process; and the words, with whatever facility they may be uttered, are nothing more than empty sounds. They are as yet dead; and it is only when the exertions of the instructor are so applied as to become really auxiliary in the developement of the child's faculties, that it is enabled to realize that they do indeed "live," can "speak," and at a subsequent period, perhaps to feel that they even breathe. If children are allowed to pass over words without understanding them, they are likely enough to acquire the habit of doing the same thing in conversation, and the difficulty of teaching such pupils will be hereby greatly increased. He that would raise a stately superstructure must secure a good and sound foundation; so the teacher who would do justice to his pupils, must see that they are well-grounded in the earliest stages of their instruction. To avoid the parrot-like iteration of words, which young pupils, when not properly taught, are liable to fall into, and to awaken their minds to look for a meaning in all they read, we would suggest that simple and familiar questions should be asked of them from the very first. Let them not pass over a lesson till, besides reading it with some readiness, they can also answer such simple questions as naturally spring out of it. The teacher should be content at first with the pupils' own words, and allow them to say what they mean, by means of a paraphrase. The object in the very first instance, is to awaken thought. As they advance more, the teacher should gradually correct the language which they employ, and also require them to give more correct explanations of the words which they read.

If then, there is any thing like that degree of importance which we have here pointed out, attaching to the instruction of the lower classes (and in what we have said we believe there is no exaggeration) then the conscientious teacher will never, except in a case of extreme necessity, think that he adequately discharges his duty towards these classes, by consigning them to the care and teaching of pupils, perhaps, little older than those they have to teach, and who are otherwise but ill-qualified for the discharge of the duties devolving on them.

W. B.

THE

ARTICLES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

ARTICLE XIII.

Of Works before Justification.

Works done before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the school authors say) deserve grace of congruity; yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

This Article is directed against one of the prominent errors which Rome has adopted, and which the doctors of that communion have always laboured to establish. They draw a distinction between the good works of believing and justified men, and the good works of the unbelieving and unjustified. For the former they contend that a reward is due on the ground of actual desert, which reward they therefore designate, the grace of condignity. For the latter they argue, that, inasmuch as these works indicate a disposition toward what is right, a grace is conceded on the part of God, corresponding to that disposition, which they therefore call, the grace of congruity. As to the good works of believing and justified men, the previous Article has declared their unfitness to endure the severity of God's judgment, thereby denying at once the possibility of any worthiness in them to deserve a reward at the hands of God. In the present Article, therefore, the Church gives her judgment touching the works of unbelieving men, and assigns her reasons for rejecting the notions of any such reward as the grace of congruity being due to them.

In the title of the Article, however, these works are described as Works before Justification, for the Church has already affirmed, in the Eleventh Article, that none are justified but the believing; now therefore, in consistency with this principle, when the works of the yet unbelieving are in question, she designates them as works before justification. In other words, they are the works which men perform before they are possessed of that faith to which justification is annexed. The same thing is expressed in different terms in the opening of the Article itself.

Works done before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of his Spirit. For such are the works of all unbelieving men. The grand distinction between them and the believing is this, they are yet in their carnal state, what they were by nature, devoid of Christ's grace, sensual, having not the Spirit. The believing have received from Christ a holy inspiration, which has made them what they are, has awakened faith within them, and caused them to become new creatures. This distinction is clearly drawn in Romans viii. 5, 9; 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10, 14. So long, therefore, as any man remains in unbelief, his works cannot be done by the grace of Christ, and are not the fruit of the inspiration of his Spirit, and on this account they

Are not pleasant to God.-For God is one who "looketh on the heart," and not on the mere acts of men; and unless the heart is right with Him, and controlled by the motives which He approves, no deeds, however fair they may seem, can find acceptance in his eyes. The works of unbelieving men, therefore, whatsoever the goodness which they may appear to men to possess, cannot be acceptable to God. They are not good works in his esteem, seeing that they are not the fruit of those principles which He demands. Matt. vii. 18; Rom. viii. 8.

Forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ.-For this faith is the only root capable of producing in us the works which God requires. What He commands is, that we should act from love to Him, but that love is awakened only where faith exists; the belief of his love to us being the very source and spring of all our love to Him, Gal. V. 6: 1 John, iv. 19; Titus ii. 11-14. These passages plainly teach us that faith in Jesus is the root from which those works are produced which God accounts as good; and consequently wherever there is no such faith, good works can never be performed.

Neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the school authors* say) deserve grace of congruity.-This must be so, if they are not in themselves acceptable to God. Works with which He is not pleased can deserve nothing from Him in this way of reward. The idea of such desert, like other doctrines of Rome, suits the natural pride of the heart of man, but it has no warrant from the Word of God. The case of Cornelius, as related in Acts x., is not unfrequently quoted as an instance of a man, whose works were accepted of God, and rewarded with an increase of graces, although he was not himself at the time a believer in the Lord Jesus. But Cornelius was not an

By the "school authors," or "schoolmen" are meant the writers, whose method of treating religious questions was framed after the model of "the schools," the name given to a system of theological disputation in an age of the Church succeeding that of the fathers.

D