lence to point out the stars in their firmament; and if they will but indicate the bright constellations that attract every eye, we are willing to infer the existence of thousands of stars of lesser magnitude in the obscurer regions of their firmament; nay, of clusters and nebulæ of secular benevolence which their telescopes may not be able to resolve. What names can they set over against John Howard and Elizabeth Fry? With whom will they match William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson? What heroes in humble life can they bring forward equal in renown to John Pounds and Sarah Martin? or to James Davies, the schoolmaster of Devauden; and Alexander Paterson, the Missionary of Kilmany? Where, among the recently-departed, will they find a working philanthropist like Thomas Chalmers; or, among the living, like Lord Shaftesbury? Or what men of mere worldly benevolence can they tell us of, who traverse the vile haunts of metropolitan destitution and profligacy, watch over the returning penitent with more than a parent's interest, and turn their homes into refuges and asylums, like Jackson of the Minories, or Walker of Westminster? It is false to affirm, and it is mean to insinuate, that the evangelical ranks are destitute of brilliant names, shining like stars of the first magnitude; the names of noble men, in all ranks of society, who have done yeoman's service to philanthropy, in those very home-walks which our caricaturists are so fond of representing as beneath their notice and their care. And, having these stars in our firmament, visible in their brightness to the naked eye, we are entitled to credit when we affirm, that there are thousands and tens of thousands in the Christian churches, who, in a sphere less observed, in Sabbath-schools, and ragged-schools, and City Missions, are exercising the same spirit of unwearied Christian philanthropy, and making many a wilderness blossom as the rose. For the most part, it is the same men-certainly it is men of the same stamp and temper-by whom Foreign Missions are supported and carried forward; and if it be easy to point to Christian labourers in the one field, who stand in the very foremost rank as philanthropists, it is not more difficult to point out men of the like nobility in the other. It will be long before even Mr. Dickens will have the boldness to represent any of his favourite characters as rivalling the self-denial and toil of modern Christian Missionaries; banishing themselves, like the Moravians, to freezing climates, or imprisoning themselves for life in hospitals for lepers; exposing their lives to the fury of South Sea savages, or the brutality of Burmese Governors; toiling night and day, year after year, in the study of barbarous languages, and the construction of grammars and dictionaries, to enable them to translate "Bleak House," or "Barnaby Rudge," and bring these great works to bear on the arduous task of mollifying the tempers of cruel cannibals. It will be long, very long, before our secularists will be able to find names, in the list of their philanthropic agents abroad, worthy of being classed with those of Eliot and Brainerd, of Schwartz and Carey, of Morrison and Milne, of Williams and Moffat, of Henry Martyn and Henry Fox, of Judson and Johnston, of Duff and Waddell. There may be weak men and selfish men in the Missionary field, and there may be some who have gone abroad because they knew they must have starved at home; but we do not hesitate to affirm, that there is no class of men that, in proportion to their numbers, have furnished so many devoted hearts and able heads as the Protestant Missionaries of recent times, or that have so strong a claim, in the judgment of truthful and honourable men, to stand exempt from the mean caricatures of their slanderers. It is the lives, and labours, and sufferings of such men that demonstrate, in these degenerate days, that the race of moral heroes is not extinct, and that, in spite of all the utilitarianism of the age, men are yet to be found, fit successors of those "of whom the world was not worthy."-British and Foreign Evangelical Review. TO TEACHERS IN DAY-SCHOOLS. [THE following counsel, from an address delivered by the Rev. John Scott to the students in the "Wesleyan • Published by John Mason, 66, Paternoster-row. Training Institution," Westminster, on commencing the session of 1854, is worthy of a far wider application, and we therefore present it to those readers of "The Youth's Instructer" who are willing to labour for proficiency in learning.-EDs.] In this Institution you will be shown by your teachers, who have trod the path before you, what parts of knowledge you most require, to qualify you for your work: these subjects you will seek thoroughly to understand. You should particularly resolve to obtain a perfect acquaintance with the elements of each branch of knowledge which you will have to teach. The commencement of each new study, I am aware, is comparatively uninteresting, and we are often anxious to hasten away from what is rudimentary in the book to those parts which more fully develop the science: against this besetment you must be upon your guard. In visiting schools in the country, I have observed a difference in the skill and ability of different teachers in giving instruction to a class or gallery in elementary knowledge. When I find a teacher who can do this with such facility and clearness that the dullest child may understand, whatever may be owing to other causes,-the clearness of his head, and his command of expression,-I attribute it at once and mainly to his perfect knowledge of what he teaches. This perfect acquaintance with the elements or first principles of a science has also this advantage,-as opportunity serves, you may read and carry out your knowledge to whatever extent you choose: having commenced aright, you have not to turn back; the forward course is smooth and easy. During your stay here, you will lay the foundations of your future acquisitions; lay them broad and deep, sufficient to admit the largest superstructure to be built upon them. That superstructure will, I trust, be creditable in every case: why should it not be eminently so? You will do yourselves full credit while you are here; and afterwards, I hope, you will ever continue to study and improve. If, in the course of your life, you should "meddle with all knowledge," I would not blame you. I am not one of those who speak derisively of what is called a smattering of knowledge. I hold that partial knowledge of any subject is better than total ignorance: the fault is, when a very limited acquaintance with a subject is ostentatiously paraded as perfect knowledge. To a thorough understanding of all that you require to make you first-rate teachers, you may add such a general knowledge of many other subjects as will enlarge your minds, and enable you better to understand what you read, and what you hear from men who have made such subjects their more particular study. Knowledge is not now so rare, even in villages, as when Goldsmith wrote: you will not excite anywhere such astonishment as the schoolmaster did by his conversation with the rustics of "sweet Auburn :" "And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, A school-teacher now must be able to do much more than One main object of this address I shall have failed to secure, if I have not convinced you that you have no time to loiter away; that while here, you are called to collect and put forth your best faculties in their utmost energy, that you may derive the fullest advantage from your present position. If you set to work as you ought, we shall have to reprove no indolence, stimulate no sluggishness, repress no levity: in your rooms appropriated to study, and even in your places and times of recreation, you will not be noisy and romping, but rather sedate and thoughtful. A light and noisy student is an incongruity. Generally speaking, one may take it for a fact, that the head is the emptiest which makes the greatest noise, and, I should say, the least likely to fill; whilst that which is most rapidly filling, or already full, will make little or no noise at all. The best assistance in your studies will be afforded you at this Institution; but you must rightly estimate that assistance. Instruction will not be poured into your minds as you pour water into a cistern, or oil into a cask: your own minds must appropriate the teaching. No royal way has yet been found to knowledge; no railway has been laid, where you may enter a carriage, seat yourselves at ease, be wafted rapidly and pleasantly forward, and, in a short time, find that you have arrived at knowledge. Yet the old round-about way, through tangled brake and rugged lanes, is now avoided. The dull and heavy work of committing long and heavy lessons and books to memory, and repeating them by rote,-where the memory is heavily weighted, while the understanding is left to sleep,-is not the plan of education and training pursued here. You will be shown the direct way to knowledge; the things to be known, in their principles, and many of their combinations, will be also shown you in the clearest manner; you will be taught how to use your understanding in the apprehension and application of the principles of science; and all this— by the ability and skill of your teachers, and the plan of instruction which they adopt-in a manner so alluring, that what Milton "pictured out," when he proposed to change the old methods of education, the absurdity of which he clearly showed, for a new and better method which he set forth, you will find in a great measure realised. "I shall |