hich pass under the name being framed on the principle of ignoring eal life, and taking no manner of account of the actual temptations E our intellectual and physical existence. Many of the most popular evotional books, such as James' "Anxious Enquirer," are so exusively theological in their structure, and so devoid of a healthy oral element-so deficient in a definition of repentance suited to e world in which our lot is cast-that it is impossible to depend such works alone for producing practical reformation. They ave their use, doubtless, in the spiritual sphere, as is proved by the stinctive demand for them among awakening spirits; but surely ey are not fitted to nurture souls in the details of the mature hristian life. The devotional books which did assist the soul in earing principles to practice-the_old tomes of casuistry, such as axter's "Christian Directory," or Jeremy Taylor's "Ductor Dubiantium”—are out of fashion. Books of casuistry, which should apply he eternal principles of the Christian religion to our modern civiliation, with its "cares, riches, and pleasures," are almost wholly nknown. "The New Testament doctrine on the godly life oplied to the Nineteenth Century" is a Sunday-book which has t to be written. Professor Wayland's "Elements of Morals" is most the only modern work that professes to apply Christianity the details of practice, and even this is very imperfect in its

nge.

It results from the foregoing statements that a Sunday-book cant be known by its title, by its colour, or by its place on the shelves the library. A Sunday-book is a book on whatever subject, of hatever shape-whether on one large unfolded sheet, or doubled into odecimo-which is read by a good man for improvement of his e, or knowledge, or for "instruction of manners." Immediately at he ceases to read it with a good intention, and in the exercise his moral faculties, it ceases to be a Sunday-book, even if every ge be gleaming with the lustre of the most enlightened piety. it no man can suppose that this good intention of religious selflture is discernible in one whose Sunday leisure is devoted to l's Life, the Sporting Times, or Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, who pitches upon amusing novels and romances for the benefit of s soul.

The true doctrine on Sunday reading is deducible with clearest idence from the Bible itself; and here we will, for the moment, en make a present to the objector of the concession that Sunday the Sabbath. The Jew might read, even on his legal Sabbathy, the whole of the Old Testament. There was no law forbidding m to read other books, but assuredly he might read his Bible. ow, what was the Bible of the Jew? It constituted his national terature. It was his national history, covered with the manyloured records of men, both bad and good. It was a picture of

life in Palestine, irradiated with the lustre of a divine revelation. It was the national psalter, and the national prayer-book; it was the oracle and the chronicle of the national policy; it was the scroll which unfolded the doom of the surrounding monarchs, and foretold the futurity of all the world. It was not a series of devotional works, entitled "Droppings from the Honeycomb," "Sparks from the Altar," "Grains from the Pot of Manna;" but it was a series of great and wholesome biographies of patriarchs, kings, prophets saints, and sinners, with all their extraordinary love stories, and wars of the Lord, and falls and recoveries, and sins and sorrows it was a book of poetry, which still kindles all susceptible souls in every land; it was a book of moral wisdom that threw the light o religion on science and on common life, and was by no means "to wise or good for human nature's daily food." Such was the Hebrew Bible. The reading of it did not breed a nation of recluses, but o practical agriculturists and tradesmen, who well understood tha God preferred conscientiousness in business to cant in religio and a well-ordered family to a splendid synagogue or a magnificer sermon. These are the Scriptures which Christ and his Apostle advise us also to read and to "search." And hence follows, wit infallible certainty of inference, a general conclusion. If the Jes might read his national history on the Sabbath Day, in the lighte religion, surely a Christian may read his on the Sunday. If Jew might read his national biographies in all their variety, Christian may read his own. If a Jew might read his nation writings on the construction of the world, when there was t knowledge of scientific truth, a Christian may read his, wherein G has made known to the sons of men his wonderful works in the fiel of nature. And if a Jew might read the "Song of Songs," which Solomon's, which he at all events could not have known to be a pr phecy of Christ, a Christian may read those treasures of English poet which endear, and exalt, and purify the life of our English home We can conceive nothing more fitted to break up the sectarianis which defaces and disgraces religion amongst us than a gener resolution to exchange such mild preparations as are many the monthly publications, or denominational magazines, for course of reading on history, on science, on morals, and contemporary interests, analogous to that of which the Hebre Bible is the prototype. Only let that sacred model of readi for the day of rest be imitated in its integrity-let there be due admixture of the strictly spiritual and devotional, such as find in the Prophecies and the Book of Psalms-and we ha no fear that the result of the discipline will be other than a vantageous. At present the reaction from the exclusive stra of Sunday thought to the secularities of the week is attended dangers which are too obvious to need illustration. The ludicro

variety of opinions in different families as to what books are fit for Sunday shows that there is no clear rule of selection, and hat after the exclusion of romances and immoral works, the SunHay quality must, for the most part, be infused by the soul. Thrice happy he who," esteeming one day above another," has learned to keep it unto the Lord" in such a sense as to go forth to the work f life more resolved than ever to judge newspapers, books, philoophies, actions, pleasures, profits, and worldly ambitions and olicies by the rules of conscience and of God. But to do this appears to us to be necessary to think of, and at least in some ases to read about, them on the Sunday.

There remains to be considered, shortly, the case of young people nder parental or tutorial control, for whom "Sunday-books" Just be chosen by their elders. And here let the general principle eceive its proper application. The young people in question are he sons and daughters of persons who desire above all things to see hem become spiritual and practical Christians. By what course of unday discipline and nurture shall this end be best promoted? One thing may be considered as certain-that if you desire to feat this aim and intention, the most effectual way to do so is to ake religion appear dull and gloomy to the young. The minds of ildren and youth are made by the Creator himself to abhor theogical abstractions and doctrinal catechisms, and nothing that you n do will succeed in expelling this detestation. The only hope influencing a child by religion is to make it appear interesting, d this signifies to present it in a form which commends it, as ach as possible, to the senses by a beautiful environment, but solutely to the understanding, the imagination, and the affections. ow, excessive doses of ordinary Sunday-school teaching, accomnied by perpetual restraints on the active and playful propensities youth, prolonged applications to tasks of memory, extreme ligence in restricting the reading to books of moral exhortation, accounts of missionary enterprise, are measures admirably signed to make religion and Sunday seem dull, and therefore unfluential. If all the sunny enjoyments of nature are shut out as t holy enough for the "Lord's Day," the chances are that a child Il learn to think that "the Lord" had very little to do with the aking of the world, and takes very little interest in the happiness His younger creatures. Let a boy learn, up till twelve or fourteen ars old, that all those natural objects in which he takes delight— rds, beasts, fishes, and insects, air, and land and water, earth and y-are not fit for notice on Sundays; that the great drama of ternal nature is to be covered and concealed with a thick curin of factitious sanctity on the day of rest; let him be diligently doctrinated with the notion that learning religion signifies only

learning the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, with the proofs, or Watts's Divine and Moral Songs, or reading sectarian periodicals, or lives of the saints; let him be trained to think that looking into a microscope or a telescope is "Sabbath breaking;" that learning about the mighty power and wisdom of God in the works of nature is profanation of "God's holy day;" that to be good signifies to keep quiet, and to feel in hot weather almost dead with weariness in hearing sermons and attending classes; and you will have gone a great way towards insuring a revolt against your religion by the time he is two years older. And such a revolt is lamentably common. The multitudes of youths of both sexes who have been "religiously educated" in Sunday-schools are, to a calamitous degree, indifferent to Christ when once they attain their liberty. Is there not some grievous fault in the existing modes of instruction? The whole conception of Sunday training requires, in many cases, some modification. Nothing can prevent the present system issuing in a rebellion against God and Christianity The practices existing in some quarters form the soil in which irre ligion sows broadcast its hateful seed. There ought to be a revolution in the whole conception of religious, and therefore of Sunday, educa tion. The revelation of God in nature and in man ought to be added to the course of instruction on the history of the Jewish kings and prophets. That God who has revealed himself in physical law in the human mind, and in history, as well as in the person an work of His Son, should surely be made known to young people His own methods. All instructions given by the Almighty Himse are interesting. They are addressed to our senses. They com mend themselves to our understandings. They awaken and excit the sense of beauty and of poetry. They animate the love music and of art. And they appeal to our affections. And whe they reach children in a natural manner, they compel the joy choirs to cry Hosanna! and to fill the temple courts with their un sophisticated songs.

Most earnestly, then, do we advise all pious persons who ha control over the Sundays of the young to consider well what the are doing, and what impressions they are giving of God and of go liness. If children think of religion as a dull subject, or of churc and school, and chapel as gloomy places, the sin is usually theirs, but their teachers.' And if Sunday is thought of as a de when the great thing is to put on your best clothes and endur with a grave face as well as you can, for twelve hours, uninterestin books and uninteresting discourses, the cause is the bilious pur tanism, or frigid formalism, of those who should have taught the better; but the consequence is likely to be in this age their fin and desperate alienation from Christianity. If David, with h Hebrew Sabbath, could not enliven his soul but by "an instr

nent of ten strings and by the psaltery," and by meditating on hose "works" of God which made him "glad" when he reflected n their beauty (Ps. xcii.), how can we expect to awaken a joy in od in the mind of a modern Christian child by teaching him to hink that inspiriting concerted music and singing are not fit for unday, and that the scent of sweet flowers in the school-room must e exchanged for the smell of thumbed and dirty catechisms, if e would rightly learn the peculiarities of the Gospel? Alas! it not in the south of Europe alone that all things cry out for religious revolution. Until there are some new Sunday-books or the elders, there will be reason to think with some measure regret of the spiritual nurture of the young.

AGAINST DANCING.

IN REPLY TO SALTEMUS.

id

'Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." R. EDITOR,-Your July number has just come to hand, and yet I ad no answers to your correspondent on Dancing. Lest the subct should wholly slip away from the notice of your readers, I write wn to-day a few thoughts which came to me, while reading his your remarks upon it in your May number. Whether I shall rther your benevolent desire to "assist many families out of their fficulties," I know not. At all events, wishing, as you do, to “ingurate a regular battle on dancing, and to have the matter fairly ad satisfactorily fought out," it would be cowardly in any of your aders holding opposite opinions to your correspondent, and with ch a challenge from yourself, not to try to meet it. With all aste, therefore, I must needs take the field, and on my way thither match up the first weapon at hand, an already old sword," sadly st" for want of use, hoping that whatever it may now chance to ck in edge, brilliance, and skill of hand, it will more than make in weight and strength.

First, I will go to your correspondent, and then (if you will perit me) have a few words with yourself.

Mr. Saltemus,-Your paper on Dancing, which appeared in the lay number of the Christian Spectator, contains some statements O which all Christians will give their hearty assent. Among these re the following:-That "Christianity is a religion for the sun to nine on "that" the living God fills His servants with joy "—that