The word EKTOEDETE, bring them up, train them up, educate, nourish them, as a precept covers all the period of childhood, or minority, not exempting one day or hour. Its sense is more fully brought out in its Septuagint use, and the corresponding Hebrew word 37, gadal, to grow, nourish, bring up. We offer this simply as an illustration of the entire code of precepts, both in the Old and New Testaments, covering this branch of parental duty. And so we would understand Prov. xxii, 6: "Train, initiate, dedicate a child at the entrance of his path." The obligation of the command, "Thou shalt teach thy children diligently," etc., dates at the earliest susceptibility of instruction in the child, and terminates only at the point where the mature responsibility of the child supersedes parental control; and through all the intermediate points of this period this instruction is appointed as the instrument of saving grace to the child.

4. The child does not grow up religious by a law of natural development. The elements of religion are not in his nature, needing only education, and right social influences, to bring them forth to ripeness. Religious instruction and discipline do not rest upon the aptitudes of nature for their promise of success, but upon grace antecedently bestowed. Prevenient grace is a fundamental truth, never to be set aside as a condition of successful instrumentality either in the adult or child. In the child, prior to accountability, all prevenient grace is saving grace; in the adult, prior to regeneration, it is assisting grace. This saving grace in the child, as in the adult, never increases but by use, and use implies accountability. It is like the life of a seed as distinguished from the life of a plant. The enveloped life of the unplanted seed retains only its normal condition, but the developed life of the planted seed expands through new and beautiful and progressive forms of existence. "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field." Mark the two points of the analogy: 1. A "seed," possessing a principle of life; 2. A genial condition, "which a man took and sowed in his field." The similitude would utterly fail if this latter circumstance were wanting. It is not the "seed" merely, but the seed "sown," the seed brought into congenial contact with external nature, suited to its germination and growth, which illustrates the life, growth, and perfection of the kingdom of God. "For so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knew not how. For the earth bringeth forth of herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." Beautiful similitude! "I have PLANTED, Apollos WATERED, but God gave the INCREASE." ChangFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.-20

ing the conditions of the metaphor somewhat, Peter says: "As new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." If the grace of infancy never comes forth to maturity, let the Church and the parent, to whom belong the planting, the watering, and the pruning, well consider it. God gives no "increase" but according to established laws. "They that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." The one talent never increased, because never used.、

5. On the metaphysics, or mere abstract possibilities of the question, whether a child can grow up in a regenerate state, without ever forfeiting its infantile state of grace, we have not hitherto proposed to enter, considering that form of the question more curious than practical. Standing on the immutable declaration of Christ, we say: "Except, Tis, any person be born again-born, eй пνεμaτоs, by the Spirit-he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And standing on the ground laid down in this argument, everywhere recognized in Scripture, we say that this grace denoted by regeneration is available to our humanity at every period of its existence. Nay more, if any one period of our life is more susceptible of grace than another, it is that of childhood; and if the faithful use of religious instrumentality has greater promise of success at one period than another, it is that of our earlier consciousness. The child may sin and repent without any greater forfeiture of its antecedent, unconditional justification, than the adult believer incurs who is "overtaken with a fault" and is "restored." Sin and grace in such instances are both in proportion only to the moral development of the child. The parent, in laying down the obligation of repentance to the child, is not required to go back of its personal consciousness. It should, indeed, be taught to confess the sinfulness of its nature, like David, who, says Calvin, "commences the confession of his depravity at the time of his conception." Psa. li, 5. It should so confess, because this fallen nature is the perpetual occasion of departing from God, and in itself offensive to his holiness, and in yielding to it we seem to adopt and approve it, and thus make it, in a sense, our personal offense. Yet the Christian life and warfare may be successfully carried on, and a state of favor, and increasing favor with God, maintained through all the stages of childhood.

6. In conclusion of this brief article, we go back and plant our feet upon the last projecting verge of prophetic utterance in the Old Testament, and endeavor, with Malachi, to lift the warning voice against the remissness of the Church in regard to family religion. Behold," says God, "I send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn

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the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.' Does this prophecy look forward to the restoration of the primitive, religious order of the family? No other construction is easy, natural, and consonant to all the connecting facts. To give the particle, translated "to," the sense of with, and read it, "the hearts of the fathers with their children," as indicating that whole families, fathers and children together, were to be turned, is a possible sense, and would imply the order of family religion. But this gives not the force of the passage. It is well enough translated in the common English; or, perhaps, we should take its more radical sense of down upon, as we find it in 2 Kings xiv, 1: "The king's heart was upon Absalom." This setting "the heart of the father upon the child, and the heart of the child upon the father," with reference to religious ends and religious duties; this turning family affections and interests into their proper channel, and making them subservient to their original ends, namely, to secure "a godly seed;" this is the point of the prophet's utterance. 'Church reformation begins with family reformation. “Every man should build over against his own house." The religious claims of the children must first be looked after. This prophecy is of such marked significance that it is quoted in the Apocrypha, (Eccl. xlviii, 10,) where the "turning of the father to the son" is the means of averting divine judgments, and "restoring the tribes of Israel;" and is also repeated as the first prophetic announcement of the New Testament. Luke i, 17. The awful import of these words rolled their solemn reverberations through the fallen Jewish Church, who, by their human traditions, had unsettled the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, and thus "made void the law of God;" and they reach down to us, and will forever stand like a beacon fire on the walls of a godless Church and family. "That thy days may be long in the land," is the blessing promised; "Lest I smite the land with a curse," is the malediction threatened. Let the Church see to it.

ART. VIII.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

GREAT BRITAIN.

The Protestant Churches.-THE REVIVAL MOVEMENTS have continued also during the last three months in England, Ireland, and, though to a lesser extent, in Scotland. From England, in particular, it is reported that there is scarcely a town where special prayer-meetings are not held for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Yet fewer reports of special interest have been received, and the physical manifestations, which at first drew so much attention, have been diminished. The demand

for publications on the revival of religion
is very great, and "The Revival," a four
paged quarto, giving news of the progress
of the awakening in the United Kingdom,
has a circulation of not less than twenty-
An interesting
five thousand weekly.

discussion on the revivals took place at
the last London quarterly meeting of the
Unitarians, almost all the speakers regard-
ing them as being brought about by the
direct and immediate agency of the Holy
Spirit of God. THE SPECIAL SERVICES FOR
THE WORKING CLASSES are again held in
a number of larger churches, and in order
to reach these classes better, a committee
of gentlemen-Churchmen and Dissenters
-decided on hiring from the lessees sev-
eral of the low theaters in the more
densely populated portions of London for
Sunday evening services. The experiment,
commenced on December 18, has been, so
far, quite successful. A case of high im-
portance, concerning the RELATION BE-

TWEEN CHURCH AND STATE, is still pending

before the law courts of Scotland.

On the appeal of Mr. Miller, the minister of Cardross, who had been deposed by the General Assembly of the Free Church for attempting to interpose the civil courts between him and discipline, the judges called on the assembly to produce in court the constitution of their Church, on which they claimed the right to depose him. This the Church refused to do, denying the jurisdiction of the court. On December 23 the court unanimously repelled the preliminary defenses for the Free Church, ordaining them to satisfy the production, and finding them liable in the expenses of process since the preliminary defenses were lodged. On January 18 a special

meeting of the Commission of the General
Assembly of the Free Church was con-
vened, to consider the steps to be taken in
consequence of the decision of the court.
The report recommended to satisfy pro-
duction in terms of the order of the Court
of Session, the Church always being pre-
pared to resist any attempt of the court
to make use of this act for reviewing the
ecclesiastical procedure, connected with
the sentence produced. This resolution
was unanimously adopted. In England,
it is especially the Church Rates question
which continues to agitate the public
mind with regard to the relation between
The Church Defense
Church and State.
Association held recently a great meeting
at Bath, where one of the speakers pro-
nounced upon "the utter inefficiency of
the voluntary principle wherever it had
been tried," while another expressed the
belief that the Wesleyan Methodists would
not join in the movement for the abolition
of the Church Rate. At a private meet-
ing of the Episcopal bench, recently held
in compliance with an earnest invitation
from the Primate, it was unanimously re-
solved to oppose any change. Among
other questions agitated in the Church of
England we mention only the MOVEMENT
AGAINST THE ALTERATION OF THE LITURGY,
as proposed by Lord Ebury. A circular
signed by Dr. Trench, Dr. Jelf, and others,
has been distributed among the clergy
with a view of calling forth an explicit
declaration of their opinion on this ques-
tion. THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS of

Both

England and Ireland differ in their opin-
ion on the education question.
bodies have formerly been opposed to the
Irish National Board of Education. But
at the last Irish Conference, in June 1859,
a majority decided that the Wesleyan
schools might be placed under the control
of the commissioners, while the committee
to which the English Conference, in Man-
chester, had referred this question, adopt-
ed, at its meeting in November, a resolu-
tion affirmative of the former principles
of the Methodists on the subject.

The Roman Catholic Church.MEETINGS IN FAVOR OF THE POPE and the preservation of his temporal sovereignty, have been held all over Ireland and in