intentions for infants to be admitted by baptism to the expectations and hopes of Christians.

The discourse then proceeds to adduce several arguments for the necessity and usefulness of a Christian education.

I. "If any person were born to a large estate, would not his parents or his guardians make it their business to prepare him from his infancy for the right use and enjoyment of it?" If an infant may properly be admitted to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, ought he not, as soon as possible, to be informed of it, and made fit for the enjoyment of it? This argument might be yet more strongly put: we are made inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, not without conditions; if we perform not the conditions, we shall never come into possession of it at all. Would not then parents or guardians, knowing what those conditions are, do their duty by their young charge, who does not and cannot know them, by instructing him in them in such a way as to preserve him from forfeiting his precious birthright? The mind of a child is very early capable of understanding the essentials of those conditions.

II. "The knowledge of God, and of his Christ, the knowledge of the Gospel, and of the terms of salvation, is essentially necessary to the happiness and comfort of the human mind; we must, therefore, wish to communicate the knowledge of religion to people of all ages and all conditions; and we shall never communicate it with a better prospect of success than when we offer it in an affectionate and patient manner to the young." P. 8.

III. Early instruction is shewn to have been the practice of the true servants of God in all ages. "I know him that he will command his children and his household," &c. was the witness of God himself concerning faithful Abraham. The injunction of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy, is in conformity with this practice; "Thou shalt teach them (my words) diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up." The Psalmist gives a noble testimony to the fulness of the provision made for the instruction of children under the Jewish economy, in the 5th, 6th, and 7th verses of the 78th Psalm; and no one can need to be reminded of the pathetic notices given by Solomon in the Book of Proverbs, concerning the assiduity with which his father inculcated religious impressions upon his youthful mind. (See Prov. iv. 3, 4, 5.) The unfeigned faith for which Timothy is commended, is said also to have "dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, and in his mother Eunice." P. 9.

IV. The miseries of the poor are greatly enhanced by the want of religious education;" the pains of disease, the vexations of poverty and disappointment, are severely felt, when there is no principle of religious consolation lodged in the heart to soften and to heal them. Without this, people fall into discontent, and contract habits of idleness, intemperance, and dishonesty." P. 12. If this is admitted, and there is no one who has visited the poor in their own habitations that will venture to dispute it, we must give them into their own hands the means of gaining religious consolation; we must give them the Scriptures: but we do not give them the Scriptures unless we enable them to understand and admire them as well as to read them. Now this is only to be done by regular instruction and education.

V. The last stimulus held out in this discourse to activity in the education of the children of the poor, is the glorious sight of uniformity in religious practice which it might be the means of producing.

"What is there that a serious Christian would not give or do, to see a whole parish employing the Lord's day in meditations of this sort; (upon the future everlasting state) reading the Bible, as the sole fountain of wisdom and comfort to their families, and thence devoutly pressing as an holy multitude, with one mind and one spirit, into the courts of the living God? and to what surer means can we have recourse for the attainment of so desirable an object, than by bringing up our children, and the children of the poor, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? P. 15.

Advice to Servants, in Five Family Lectures. By the REV. JOHN HOTHERSALL PINDER, M.A. 12mo.

1824.

1s. Rivingtons and Cochran.

THIS is a little work of five-and-thirty small pages, executed in á very plain and almost colloquial style, but entering into its subject with a minuteness of detail which proves it to be the offspring of a good deal of observation and reflection: the first Lecture sets forth the relation in which the master and servant stand to each other. The second treats of dishonesty in a servant. The third of lying. The fourth of idleness. And the last of drunkenness. The second and third are likely, perhaps, to be the most practically useful, because they follow up the

vices of which they treat through all the various forms which they assume, and detect them lurking under practices but too often considered innocent, or at least allowable. We have room only for a single extract.

"If any mischief has been done by some servants, even accidentally, they will hide it, or leave it in such a way, that others may be suspected and themselves cleared. Some are indeed bold liars; they will tell you that you have not seen what you have seen; that you have not heard what has actually entered in at your ears. If you inquire what noise that was, nobody was speaking; who that strange person was,' not a soul has set foot near the house. My friends, is it not more easy'

to tell what you have seen, said, or done, than to invent, find out, make, and bring forth something you have not seen, not said, not done, and try to make it pass for what you have? If you are slow in carrying a message, careless in business, late when called for, unsuccessful in what you were trying your hand at, is it not more easy to do the present duty, confess the fault as it is; and even in a case of mischief, to tell the truth, take the consequence, and have done with it, than to tell another lie, to hide the fault, and put off your punishment to the day of judgment?" Lect. iii. p. 16.

To those servants who have a desire to improve, and who have not been wholly without the means of instruction, these lectures are calculated to be very beneficial: to such they will undoubtedly be a means of raising the standard of duty, and of pointing out distinctions between right and wrong, which have hitherto been either ill understood or altogether unnoticedby them.

Lord Byron's Works, viewed in Connexion with Christianity, and the Obligation of Social Life. 4 Sermon delivered at Holland Chapel, Kennington, July 4th, 1824. By the REV. JOHN STYLES, D.D. 8vo. 32pp. 1s. 6d. Knight and Lacey. 1824.

WE are glad to see a publication by Dr. Styles, with his name to it; and very much preferring a good single Sermon, to two or three volumes of an indifferent religious novel, we cheerfully find a place for the best production we have met with of his ready pen.

In the opening of this Discourse, from Gen. iv. 9. "Am I my brother's keeper?" a general inference is drawn from the

case of Cain, that infidelity is anti-social, and would, moreover, if unchecked, "soon leave no vestige of humanized society upon the face of the earth." Cain, being an infidel, was led to trample upon social rights, and became a murderer: other Cains, more recent infidels, are found in like manner to despise the just claims of their fellow-creatures, and to become, if not always physical, yet moral murderers.

Before our author proceeds to establish the heavy charge of infidelity against the Poet whose works form the subject of discussion, he deprecates the imputation of want of charity, in recalling the errors of the dead; and makes some forcible remarks on the feelings which ought to be excited by such a case as the one he is considering.

"When wonderful endowments," says Dr. Styles, "when intellectual capacity of the highest order are employed in throwing the elements of crime into the great mass of the community, identifying themselves with the principles of an infidel philosophy, and charming the imagination that they may more surely corrupt the heart; when, like Lucifer, a son of light falls from his sphere, and carries moral ruin and devastation in his erratic and descending course, shining and destroying as he rolls along, equally an object of surprise and terror,-what ought to be our emotions and sentiments when the career of such a minister of evil is arrested? Pity for the individual who is gone to his great account, regret for the debasement of the finest faculties, whose original destination was for "glory, and honour, and immortality," will not fail to be awakened in every Christian bosom, but with these sensations will be excited others of a very different kind ;-such as usually succeed the removal of a scourge and a visitation of calamity; together with a virtuous determination to use all the means in our power to mitigate and circumscribe the misery it may have inflicted." p. 5.

Dr. Styles then produces, at some length, four distinct proofs, to be detected in the various writings of Lord Byron, that their author was no other than " a most dangerous abettor of the infidel cause.'

The first of these proofs, is "That total alienation from the spirit and influence of all religion, both natural and revealed, which pervades his various productions." P. 6.

The second consists in "the identity of his philosophy with that of our modern Epicureans." P. 10.

The third in his having "published in a popular form, atheistical and abominable speculations, which the worst men only conceive, and to which, wicked as they are, they dare not give utterance, except in the immediate circle of their initiated and depraved associates." P. 13.

The fourth, and heaviest charge against the late Lord Byron,

is, that "which exhibits him as the direct assailant of virtue; the deliberate corrupter of morals; the profligate and undisguised advocate of vice." P. 22.

Under the first head of proofs, after a sort of preface shewing how lovely the Christian Dispensation is, and how it ministers to the welfare and delight of mankind, we have the following passage.

"Christianity appears to be his utter aversion. When he would illumine the gloom of his darker speculations, he points some indignant flash against this divine system; and when in his more playful moods, he would indulge in all the joyousness of scorn and derision, (the only pleasure which sin had left him,) it is at the expense of all things good and holy.....In a note to that strange and monstrous production, which he has left unfinished, and in which, through sixteen cantos, he alternates between profaneness and obscenity; with a double inconsistency-he protests that he has no where arraigned the creed of Christ; and in the same sentence introduces an impious and degrading reference to his Holy incarnation.".... Indeed we may sorrowfully remark, that amidst the numerous pages, which through a succession of years this unrivalled genius has given to the world, (and many of which are of a metaphysical character), he has not a solitary idea which can associate either his speculations or his ethics with the gospel of our salvation." P. 8.

The second proof is not supported by allusions to any particular part of the noble poet's works: by "the school of modern Epicureans," however, is intended that combination of wild. beings, who having freed themselves from the notion of a Supreme Being, are governed entirely by a principle of selfishness which looks only for present gratification, and who have yet by some strange inconsistency assumed to themselves "universal benevolence," as their badge and motto.

The third proof seems to be rested principally upon the publication of a dramatic work called "Cain; a mystery." We are sorry to be obliged to mutilate Dr. Styles's paragraphs, but our limits give us warning to be brief.

According to the noble author's conception of the character, Cain is, from first to last, consistent. He is not strictly an Atheist: but God is, in his view, a tyrannical and terrible being, whom he clothes in all the attributes of Moloch. These ideas of the Divine Majesty he professes to derive from all above, around, and within him; the effect is discontent. Discontent is the natural ally of rebellion, and rebellion wars not only with the sovereign, but with all loyal subjects. Hence he takes no pains to conceal his enmity to God, and his servants. He tramples on the altar, and slays the priests, and desecrates the temple,