buted, which, when abused for mean and selfish purposes, degenerated into cunning, and made the Greek name, in that respect, a by-word among the nations; but when applied to the investigation of truth, led to those sublime theories, to which, although apprised of their errors by the superior light of revelation, we cannot refuse to pay the tribute of profound admiration.

While such judicious care was bestowed upon the development of the intellect, still more powerful levers were applied to the moral feelings. The study of the fine arts, and especially of poetry, whose harmonious notes reechoed from shore to shore, and from island to island, formed the other and more important part of that almost irresistible combination of intellectual and moral influences, designated by the comprehensive name of μουσική. Thus inspired with a high poetic enthusiasm, and armed with the weapon of acute penetration, the Greek youth approached the study of philosophy, the investigation of the most abstruse as well as the most practical subjects, of the inner nature of man, as well as of his outward relations as a social being. The latitude which was in all their studies afforded to every individual, to invent, to think, to feel, and to apprehend for himself, was the life of their education, which became dead from the moment when the sophists began to reduce it into the forms of system and pedantry. To nothing else than this latitude, this individual liberty, is it to be attributed, that, within comparatively so short a period, and within so small an extent of territory, so many men rose up of eminent character, all strongly marked with the features of distinct originality, the powerful influence of which was so great, that whilst in other nations, and among the Greeks themselves in Sparta, the character of eminent men was determined by that of the nation: in Athens, on the contrary, and in other Greek states, the community assumed successively the different characters, how

ever contradictory with each other, of those privileged individuals, whom natural endowments and a high degree of cultivation rendered, not by legal enactment, but by the universal consent of admiration, the rulers of their fellow citizens, and the tone-givers of their age.

Very different from this picture is that which Rome presents. Rome's social constitution was, from its very beginning, nothing more nor less than a highly refined and highly consistent system of social selfishness. Much has been said of the disinterestedness of the Roman character, of that spirit of self-denial, and devotedness to the universal welfare, which are praised up as the definitive virtue of that celebrated city; but it has been forgotten that the very reverse of all this was the character which the Romans as a body displayed towards a world trodden in the dust by their unquenchable thirst of conquest. It has been forgotten that, if examples of self-sacrifice occur in Roman history, which are unparalleled in the records of any other Pagan nation, they were only the price paid for those phantoms of glory, by which the Republic rewarded the suppression of every independent thought, and of every free feeling of the human bosom. The self-denial was but an illusory one; for every Roman looked with an eye of insatiable greediness to the commonwealth for his share of the national grandeur and glory, as a compensation, which he considered himself entitled to for the absolute sacrifice of his individual selfishness; so that when the state was no longer able to satisfy the progressively increasing demands of those impetuous creditors, the Roman threw off the ill-endured mask, and, in the entire dissolution of all social order, displayed individually that same character, which, as his national feature, had rendered him long before the execration of the world. It seems somewhat inconsistent with this absolute claim to the whole existence of every individual, which the Roman community preferred, and for a time enforced, that edu

cation should have been allowed to remain in the hands of the family. But the paradox is easily solved if we consider that the mother was no less a Roman than the father, and that the pride and ambition of the family was an atmosphere so favourable to the growth of those much lauded virtues of the Roman character, that the state, in leaving the child in the hands of the parent, so far from hazarding the public object of education, on the contrary secured it much more effectually than could have been done by any other means. The wisdom of this arrangement is sufficiently vindicated by its results. Nothing was introduced in the education of the young Roman, but what was immediately calculated to fit him for the purposes of the Republic; religious education he received none, for there was not even at Rome so much as an education for the priesthood. The compendious system of superstition, which has sometimes been honoured with the name of the religion of Rome, was never any thing but a lever in the hands of the aristocracy, to set in motion, or arrest, at their pleasure, the brute force of the ignorant and credulous mass; and, therefore, the priesthood was in Rome nothing but an appendage to the executive power. A splendid political and military career was in Rome the straight road to church preferment. How little Roman education had to do with science, with art and philosophy, is notorious enough. Down to the period of the conquest of Greece, those fruits of the Greek soil were entirely unknown in the invincible city; and what estimation they were held in afterwards, is sufficiently evident from the fact, that the task of teaching them devolved exclusively upon slaves. There is, however, one school, and that a public one, in which the Roman youth received part of his education-I mean the camp. To make him a good soldier, and, if descended from an aristocratic family, a good general, the boy was domesticated in the tent as early as possible, there to be rendered familiar with the revolting scenes of the field of battle, and to be inured to

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THE JEWISH THEOCRACY.

that callousness of feeling, to that contempt of suffering and death, which was an essential ingredient in the character of a Roman. This was the education by which Rome insured victory and triumph to its rapacious eagles!

Having thus taken a short glance of the state of education as it was in the pagan world, it will be more easy for us to understand the change which was operated upon it by the introduction of Christianity. But before I proceed to this, it will be necessary that I should notice the character which education assumed under the influence of that theocratic principle upon which the social constitution of the Jewish nation was founded; as it forms a most striking contrast with those schemes of human policy which I have before mentioned. Among the Jews, education was, as we might expect from the peculiar and eminent station assigned to that people in the history of the ancient world, essentially religious. From the moment of birth the child was made subject to the ordinances of religion; its earliest impressions must have been those of indispensable religious duty. Every occurrence of daily life was a means of bringing to the recollection of the youths of Israel, the God of their fathers, by whose will the whole of their lives was to be regulated; and the visits which they paid, from the age of twelve years, three times every year, at the temple of Jerusalem, where the whole nation was on those solemn occasions assembled, gave to those religious feelings which domestic life had awakened, a national character. Then it was, that the idea of the invisible God ruling over his people Israel, and directing them in all their ways, received its full value, and its full force. Their priests and rulers were not men commanding in their own name; they were the witnesses of the Most High,-his standardbearers, the messengers of his will and word among his people; and every individual felt, that the direction of his heart, and the conduct of his life, belonged not to himself, but to the Lord. It was this absolute submission of the soul to the ruling power of the invisible Jehovah,-the

THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

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effect of a purely theocratic education, in those periods of the Jewish history, in which the people lived in the spirit, not after the letter of their dispensation,—that filled the whole nation with that high enthusiasm, with which they boldly held up the banners of the Lord of Hosts in the midst of an idolatrous world, and gained the most glorious triumphs over enemies, which, in a merely human point of view, must have overwhelmed them by the superiority of their power, as, in fact, they actually did, whenever the spirit of the Lord was departed from the elected nation. Of great and lasting importance is, in this, as in so many other respects, the great example which God has set up in Israel; for in spite of the abundant profession which there is among us, of religious education, I have no hesitation in saying, that if it was not for the picture exhibited in the better times of the Jewish history, the world would not yet have had, down to the present day, a practical illustration of the effect which the theocratic principle, the principle of the power and Spirit of God ruling over the heart of man, applied to education, has upon the character of individuals, and of nations.

But I resume now the history of education in the Gentile world, considering the changes which the introduction of Christianity produced. We have not, that I am aware, any direct information respecting this subject, as it stood in the primitive Christian Church; but, from what we know of its character in other respects, it will not be difficult to infer, with a high degree of certainty, what may have been the leading features of education among the early Christians. From the simple application, which was, at the very earliest period, made of the principles of brotherly love, upon the administration of the temporal concerns of believers, inducing them to establish among themselves community of goods, if not always in form, at least in spirit, and to unite in a sort of sacred household,—I should apprehend that the education of the first Christians was essentially domestic. From the meek and lovely character of the Christian dispensation