in a standard of antecedent preparation for the society of saints made perfect, in a higher and holier state. Yet, by a careful perusal of the christian system, taught in the New Testament, we learn of provisions made on a scale of the grandest benevolence, to educate and prepare the most magnificent and perfect samples, or patterns, of man made holy, for the saintship of the New Jerusalem. This world is, therefore, the appointed arena whereon the "School of Christ" is to achieve its victories over both flesh and spirit, in their entire subjugation to the dominion of grace-whereon the war of faith, and hope, and love is to be waged, for the full unfolding of a character "perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord."

But principles should be exemplified in the concrete-not held alone in the abstract. We, therefore, hold that all churches holding the great practical truths of New Testament evangelism, are responsible to God and this age for the light which they may cause to shine. This is emphatically a teaching age; but the church of God should specially teach from the lively oracles committed to her. Nor ought she to train the thousands who daily come to her gates to seek the blessed shade of her institutions, for life and its multiplied forms of business responsibility— nor for a high intellectual standing-nor for places of conflict with the scientific infidelity of the times-nor chiefly for a position in the visible church-but rather for the ranks of the triumphant church, the city of angels and of God. Teach our children and youth the experimental marrow of the gospel. What is best for heaven is best for the visible church-and whatever prepares for the earthly house of God, is qualifying in the highest style of preparation for the state above. Qualifications for the heavenly world, for the christian church, and for the great American Republic, may and should be blended in the same nobly finished character. Such we believe to be the man wanted by the times—such in divine learning--such in experience-such in moral beauty and strength --such in scriptural wisdom.

Fully persuaded of the truthfulness and safety of our position-of its not being without precedent of its meeting with favor among the true evangelical Israel of God, both in this and in other countries, with the greatest hope that good may be the result of our deliberations, we proceed to our theme for the present interesting occasion.

The spiritual culture of the christian system to be taught in the Sabbath schools of evangelical christianity.

I. Evangelical christianity teaches the regeneration of human nature. This is the beginning of the new spiritual life, therefore a matter of understanding to the pupils of christianity. It is fundamental to her identity. We regard this great work as the commencement of a new relationship with the Divine Being, termed heirship with Christ. The most ingenious and penetrating of mankind could never have invented a thought of so great magnitude, and filled with so many wonders of condescension and grace. In the word of God, it is designated as a second birth, a birth from above, a divine resurrection, Christ formed in the heart, partaking of the Divine nature.

When regarded strictly, its position forbids that we pronounce it a process of cultivation. Yet it is both an antecedent and a condition;

going before any positive steps of training, and being a relation of new creation, it is a condition on which depends all that can afterwards follow. We may count this spiritual change a part of the edifice, on account of its similitude to the foundation of a building, on whose firm and supernatural basis or structure the superfabric may afterwards be reared.

We regard this doctrine of the birth from above as the fundamental one of the venerable christian system; it therefore justly enters most deeply into the spirit, the experience, the beliefs, and the activities of the most retired and private life of religion. Our ways of spiritual life, our modes of thought, our varieties in feeling and sentiment, our mental and spiritual habits from hence take their direction and their coloring. In this regard, a new-born soul truly hath a new secret life, of which no other one can form the most distant conception, for he sees things, and hears things, and feels things, and enjoys things, by faith, to which others are strangers. His private life, like that of other men, lies where no eye but the omniscient one rests upon him, but here the parallel ends, for he alone of all men walks and communes with God. In social life, amidst a thousand varied influences, and characters, and personages, the history of divine children, of divinely regenerated humanity, is essentially the same, possesses a remarkable identity in the style of its associations, and in the quality of its companionships. Equally true is it, and for kindred reasons and on similar grounds, that the more manifest and public life of a christian is not identical with that of other men. The radical origin of a holy life is so opposite, and the principles so dissimilar, and the ends of temporal being so great a contrast to the life, and principles, and ends of life of an unholy one, that the currents of existence may flow indefinitely near and parallel to each other, but they will never commingle their waters nor become one. The reason is evident; the present being, with the one, proceeds according to the law of life, while with the other, it is ruled according to a changeless law of death.

Precisely at this point, evangelical christianity should be wisely guard

ed. This can not be done till her nurseries of instruction are conducted on the true principles, and in her own spirit. These must be operated on the axiomatic truth that, every institution, every character among men, and the practical life of man, cannot have too much of the moving hand of God in them. A basis of instruction is wanted, wherein the hand of ignorance, of instability, of corruption, of guilt, and of superlative weakness, is little known, except as an agency of conveyance, and wherein the power, which is all-moving, and grace, which is all-conquering, may reveal their quenchless energies. The human mind, before it has learned to be skeptical, or become the prey of doubt or theorizing, is eminently recumbent. It revels in the greatest satisfaction when it finds an earnestly sought pillar, against whose mighty form it may lean, amid the tremulous vibrations of human opinion, and the commotions of a conjectural faith. Regeneration is such a pillar. The eternal God has reared it, and on its majestic proportions He has written His name. Though unknown to human philosophy-though unseen by the wise ones of the world-though a stranger to the ethics of mere intellect-though eschewed in the pantheistic philosophy of modern times, still it is the vital law of spiritual lifeit is the dignity of man-it is the wisdom of God.

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We recognize in this principle what, in the appliances of human governments, is termed naturalization. Its positions and relations to the various parts of the divine economy, are in all essential particulars analogous. It is that process which ends in an alien becoming invested with the rights and privileges of a native citizen. It is, therefore, both an act of favor and of ability on the part of a beneficent government, and a work of relationship done for and in the nature of the alien. The Majesty of Heaven, by every possible right which can inhere in the Creator, the Preserver, and the Benefactor, superadded to all which attaches to the merciful Saviour of fallen man, prescribes what conditions shall be met, and what work of naturalization shall be wrought prior to an alien being made a subject and a citizen of grace. A change of nature, in which the individual becomes both a passive recipient and an aetive agent, is this work, by virtue of which a child of darkness becomes a child of light-one of death is transformed into one of life. Every scion of our degenerate humanity is a partaker of the degeneracy of the parent stock. Anterior to the change under contemplation, than which there is none greater or more important in the history of man's being, every child, of all and even the best of parents, baptized or unbaptized, is a foreigner is subject to the powers of another realm-is in heart an enemy to the rule of Christ, till he makes the ultimate election, and is made a subject of God by the spiritualizing agency of the Holy Ghost. This is our reply, should the question be proposed, why we would teach this great doctrine to the young of our Sabbath schools, because God has taught it to us, and what the Great Parent of all has made known as of the highest importance to us, is doubtless of the greatest moment to those who bear our name, and blood, and infirmities, and examples with them through the world.

This basis of christian culture being understood as such, the obligation to teach it to our children is as imperative as the dangers to their faith on this vital point are imminent. Besides this, should it not be so taught, we have no substitute but that terrible philosophy, which makes Christ a better sort of man-regeneration a calling out the latent good of human nature-christianity a very high and valuable philosophy-the atonement the death of a noble man for his noble principles-and which transmutes the genial piety of the gospel into cold morality. What we here teach is fundamental to the most liberal scale of spiritual education. Adapted to the masses in their lowest grovelings in vice, and fitted to the wants of the higher grades of society, it meets with an equally nice adjustment the lowly mind and the highly cultured taste. It provides the reformatory power so urgently sought. It supplies the element of stability so imperatively demanded by the times. To be all this to the present age, it proposes to make each man strong in himself. The individuals are born of a strong God, therefore the aggregated strength of the christian church. The oak is firm because his every fibre is strong. We wonder at that mighty influence, which enchains the orbs of universal nature in the magnificent whole, and each part in its own system, but still more are we astonished to perceive the bonds of an all-pervading and an all-uniting force extending its attractive power into the minutest particle of sand in the stupendous frame. Not all the universe of God-not its individual systems-not each particular orb alone, but the smallest grain

on the ocean's margin has attraction in itself. So is it in the spiritual creation of the All Wise. There could be no euphonizing cord in the endless systems of His empire of being, were it not that each live soul had been lighted and warmed by the individualizing finger of the Almighty. There can not be one of the glorified church and of the militant church, but on the same grand scale of citizenship-each integer changed and incorporated.

It is further evident that there is really no safety to the christian system, with the standard of admission to citizenship less elevated than an entire change of the spiritual nature. No trust could be placed in the hands of the subject of an inimical sovereign. Transfer of allegiance is the absolute condition of a place among Jehovah's subjects. Could it be, our temporal governments would require all this as the price of a freeman's rights and privileges. But God proposes to accomplish this superhuman work for man, provided he will co-operate in it. He, therefore, requires no qualification for citizenship in His divine empire, which He is not able to bestow; no nature regenerate, which He has not promised to beget; no light, which he is unwilling to cause to flame; no life in these cold clods of death, which he does not intend to call forth from their tomb; no love, which he does not pledge to inspire and sustain. Should this feature of evangelism be suffered to drop from our systems of training, her enemies would hold a jubilee, her polished shafts of beauty would fall from their temple-place, her peerless heritage would be given to reproach, for the rising hosts of her children would come up with an essentially defective faith, with an insufficient christian experience, with a piety bereft of its richest fruition here, and its brighest felicities hereafter.

II. Evangelical christianity teaches the spiritual discipline appropriate to the highest style of culture.

The term discipline embraces a complex idea, and is used in the sense of education, correction, affliction and trial combined in one whole. This idea can be but in part illustrated by the course of training applied to the pupil, in a thoroughly organized and well-operated school of the best class. Here the theory of the scholastic life is taught, together with many of those habits which pertain to the mature manhood, but the instructor never crosses the threshold of the academic hall into the active and responsible affairs of life. Not so with the disciplined of christianity. Theory and practice, teacher and pupil, are never parted from the society of each other.

Therefore the primary result to the scholar in the schools of evangelism, is a large fund of available religious knowledge. At first, he is the recipient of a vast variety of facts, and principles, and processes, all of which are inseparably interwoven with the duties, the relations, the obligations, and the characters with which we come into daily contact. By the increase of knowledge supposed, the student is prepared to proceed on in the acquisition of very many different departments of varied learning, because, his acquiring abilities have arrived at the strength and maturity equal to the labor of pioneering amid the infinite regions of truth, tracked by now and then a solitary and ardent traveller, but never alone and unguided. The great world, or universe of spiritual truth, lies open

to the footstep of every one who will laboriously search for treasures, inviting in the most eloquent terms to the possession of its infinitudes of wealth -nature, providence, and the revealed word of God, external to us, and a world of mind and spirit within us, making a rich source of experimental gains of knowledge. Hence the learner becomes furnished with whatever is necessary for a largely beautiful culture of spiritual nature. This department of discipline therefore comprehends the imparting of knowledge and its objective result, the development of the abilities.

Discipline is a work of extermination. There are elements in our nature, agitating the very fountains of being, which discipline must crucify. Errors in judgment, in faith, in experience, and in action, must disappear, that rectitude of the inward and outward man may take their place. It is intended to extinguish the turbulent tempers of the soul, those great disturbers of tranquillity and enemies to gracious order, and to rear up in their stead the most serene and magnanimous dispositions and peaceful impulses. It corrects the groveling and sinking tendencies of our nature, and places therein those benignant incentives to goodness, which put forth their entire forces heavenward. It must pierce and slay the appetites and passions of both body and spirit together, which stand eagerly looking out of every aperture, and door, and gateway of the goodly human body, ready to invite and welcome old enemies into the heritage of God. A great work of extermination must thus be achieved ere the soul can be left in peaceful enjoyment of her legacies of grace, and this must be largely done by discipline.

A further design of discipline is, to accomplish a work of submission in the affections and will. The divine rule respecting our management of the affections and the same is true of the will-is, "Set not your affections on things on the earth." But the truant tendency of the human heart is ever towards things in this world. Therefore the hand of discipline removes the objects of affection by dissolution-possessions fly away in a day--health and vigor waste by unanticipated diseases-position and employment are lost without fault or just cause-favor among men fluctuates and is lost without demerit or incapacity. The pompousness of pride, or self-estimation, or vanity, so natural to humanity unregenerated, must be humbled by the hand of severe afflictive visitations. The will of man has ever striven most earnestly to declare independence for itself, to elect its own way against the truth and law of God, to worship the idols of its own handicraft, to reverence the decisions of its own understanding, and to limit every other being and thing to its own narrow plan of operations. Therefore, the pall of obstruction, disruption, or disappointment, is, by a wise unseen hand, spread over the field of purposes, or the lawns of anticipated bliss; over the circle of domestic fondness, or the area of professional duties and avocations; and the clear, bright visions of auroral glory are shrouded in a portentous meridian hour of storm and tempest, when the will, chastened by the finger of Providence, chooses the will and way of God, and, joined with grace-endowed and elevated affections, makes common cause with every noble impulse of heavenly-mindedness, and adds momentum to every movement towards the city of God.

Still further. Discipline has not achieved its entire work, till it has forced out into robust development the beautiful proportions of a manly