any Being To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine. SIR, Your correspondent Eliku, seems that harmless appellation, a to have been dreaming, and under "Divine," as applied to a man, to have seen a vision almost as terrific nite. as that of Eliphaz the Tema 66 tionships subsisting between man and man may be expressed by those terms which, in their unqualified acceptation, it would be profane to apply to less than the Eternal. It is in reference to this latter sense that Jesus Christ has expressly said, "Call no man master,” and “Call no man father;" whilst in the former sense Paul enjoins the duty A "Divine" evidently means of obedience to man under both nothing more than "a man who these characters. So likewise the has made divinity his study." infinite Jehovah is to be had in Hence, we say, a learned Direverence by all them that are vine," a pious divine," " an able round about him, in a sense that Divine," a judicious Divine," it would be idolatry to exercise a profound Divine," "a shallow towards any other being in the Divine," &c. I do not mean to universe. And yet notwithstanding insinuate that the last of these this, children are taught to rever-epithets is applicable to our modern enee their parents and an aposElihu, of whom I know no more tle speaking of conjugal duties, than he knows of me. hesitates not to command. the wife see that she reverence her husband." The terms good and holy, it is conceived, might be objected to on the same principle. "Let 66 99.66 IGNOTUS. THAT eminent critic, Dr. Campbell remarks, "The style of the Evangelists is chaste and simple; no effort in them to say extraor In their absolute sense they are ON THE STYLE OF THE EVANGELISTS applicable only to the Deity. He is immaculately pure, and "there is none good but one, that is God;" but there is a sense in which the same terms are applied in Scripture, both to men and things; where the former have been sanctified by the divine spirit, and the latter consecrated to his sacred service. The same or similar remarks might be made in reply to your correspondent at Bath, who in the number for October, objects to the application of the term " Divine" to ministers. No man of common sense ever imagines that ministers claim or wish for "divine adoration." Far be that from them. His paper must be intended as a burlesque, and as such it may be dismissed. New Romney, Kent. J. M. dinary things in an extraordinary manner. The diction, if not, when judged by the rhetorician's rules, pure and elegant, is, however, natural, easy, and modest. Though they did not seek out fine words, the plainest, and, to that class of people with whom they were conversant, the most obvious, came unsought. They aimed at no laboured antithesis, no rounded periods, no ambitious epithets, no accumulated superlatives: there is a naked beauty in their manner which is entirely their own." Note on Matt. ix. 26. * See Job. iv. 13—16. REVIEW. Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School and the other Parochial Institutions for Education, established in that City in the Year 1812. With Strictures on Education in General. By JOHN WOOD, Esq. 1829. 4s. 6d. in view, and to bring into active operation, those simple and obvious principles which they conceive nature herself must have dictated to every parent and teacher previously to more artificial contrivances. To open up a royal road to learning, by which all the advantages of superior education might be In a country which has nobly distin- attained, without any trouble on the part either of the teacher or scholar, undoubtguished itself as the first to produce edly never for a single moment entered into one of the fairest fruits of civil and re- their contemplation. But they were by no ligions liberty, the general education of means, on that account, less anxious to do the people, we should naturally antici- every thing in their power to render the pate just and enlightened sentiments on duties of both as easy, as pleasing, and profitable as possible; and particularly to study the important subject of education; an the capacity and the inclinations of the expectation which the very interesting learner. In all their arrangements they have work before us will not disappoint. We regarded their youngest pupil, not as a especially recommend a careful perusal machine, or an irrational animal that must of it to those who are actually engaged in be driven, but as an intellectual being who establishing or superintending schools; sation and memory, but with perception, may be led, endowed not merely with senfor we are persuaded they will find, in judgment, conscience, affections, and pasthe Edinburgh Sessional School, an ad- sions; capable to a certain degree, of remirable model for such institutions. Its ceiving favourable or unfavourable impresdirectors have selected and combined sions, of imbibing right or wrong sentiments, the best elements of the new modes of of acquiring good or bad habits; strongly averse to application where its object is teaching, so as to render their system unperceived or remote; but, on the other most efficient in securing the mental hand ardently curious, and infinitely deand moral progress of the pupils. The lighting in the display of every new attainbenevolent author appears to have been ment which he makes. It has, accordingly, the chief agent in perfecting this sys-than to task, to make the pupil understand been their auxious aim to interest, no less tem, of which he is the warm, yet temperate advocate, happily avoiding the egotistic dogmatism which so often disfigures works of this class. The views upon which it is founded are of univer-him repeat the words of a rule, to speak to sal application, based upon the immutable and eternal principles of nature and common sense and supported by the best of all evidence, the results of actual experiment. What these views are will appear in the following quota tion. (as much as possible) what he is doing, no less than to exact from him its performance; familiarly to illustrate, and copiously to exemplify the principle, no less than to hear him, and by all means to encourage him to speak in a natural language which he understands, rather than in irksome technicalities which the pedant might approve; to keep him while in school, not only constantly, but actively, energetically employed, whatever is his present occupation, (wheto inspire him with a zeal for excelling in ther it be study or amusement,) and even where he is incapable of excelling others, still by noticing with approbation every step however little, which he makes towards improvement, to delight him with the consciousness of excelling his former self. "The truth is, that the conductors of this establishment never had the slightest desire to hold themselves out as the inventors of a new system, but have, on the contrary, uniformly attributed any success which may "These obvious principles may be grafted have attended their humble labours, not so on a variety of systems of external arrangemuch to any novelty or peculiarity of exter-ment, adapted to the particular circumstances nal arrangement, as to their having made it and object of each individual seminary; but their anxious endeavour, to keep steadily for any defect of the principles themselves, or of a due sense of their paramount importance, we conceive that no system of external arrangement, however beautiful; no selection of books, however judicious, uo talents or accomplishments on the part of the instructor, however brilliant and transcendant, can ever in any degree compensate." The explanatory method of teaching to read, which we believe infant schools have been the means of rendering deservedly popular, is carried to a high degree of perfection in the Sessional School. "How many fine passages have been read in the most pompous manner, without rousing a single sentiment in the mind of the performer! How many in which they have left behind them only the most erroneous and absurd impressions and associations! Of such associations, if we remember right, Miss Hamilton in one of her works on education, affords some striking examples from her personal experience. To these we may add another, furnished by a gentleman of our acquaintance, which, strong as it is, will we believe, be recognized by most of our readers, as too true a picture of what, from a similar cause has not unfrequently occurred to themselves. He had been accustomed, like most schoolboys to read, and probably to repeat, without the slightest attention to the sense, Gray's Elegy, not uncommonly known in school by the name of "The curfew tolls.' What either curfew' or tolls' meant, he according to custom, knew nothing. He always thought, however, of toll-bars, and wondered what sort of tolls were curfew tolls; but he durst not, of course, put any idle question on such a subject to the master. The original impression, as might be expected, remained, and to the present hour continues to haunt him, whenever this well known poem comes in his mind. must of course be very few and limited, and the direct information communicated through them extremely scanty. The skill of the instructor must therefore be exhibited not merely in enabling the pupil to understand these few passages, but in making every lesson bear upon the proper object of his labours, the giving a general knowledge and full command of the language, which it is his province to teach, together with as much other useful information, as the passage may suggest and circumstances will admit. As in parsing, accordingly, no good teacher would be satisfied with examining his pupil upon the syntactic construction of the passage before him as it stands, and making him repeat the rules of that construction; but would also at the same time, call upon him to notice the variations, which must necessarily be made in certain hypothetical circumstances; so also in the department of which we are now treating, he will not consider it enough, that the child may have, from the context or otherwise, formed a general notion of thre meaning of a whole passage, but will also, with a view to future exigencies, direct his attention to the full force and signification of the particular terms employed, and likewise, in some cases at least, to their roots, derivatives, and compounds. Thus for example, if in any lesson the scholar read of one having done an unprecedented act,' it might be quite sufficient for understanding the meaning of that single passage, to tell him that no other person had ever done the like;' but this would by no means fully accomplish the object we have in view. The child would thus receive no clear notion of the word unprecedented, and would therefore, in all probability, on the very next occasion of its recurrence, or of the recurrence of other words from the same root, be as much at a loss as before. But direct his attention to the three-fold com position of this word, the un, the pre, and the cede. Ask him the meaning of the sylJable un in composition, and tell him to "But in the last place they little know point out to you, (or if necessary, point out the full value of the explanatory method, to him) any other words, in which it has who think it unnecessary in any case, to this signification of not (such as uncommon, carry it beyond what is absolutely essential uncivil,) and if there be leisure, any other to enable the pupil to understand the mean- syllables which have in composition a simiing of the individual passage before him at lar effect, such as in, with all its modificathe time. As well, indeed, might it be tions of ig, il, im, ir, also dis and non, with maintained, that in parsing, the only object examples. Next investigate the meaning of in view should be the elucidation of the par- the syllable pre in composition, and illusticular sentence parsed; or that, in reading trate it with examples, such as previous Cæsar's Commentaries in a grammar school, premature. Then examine in like manner the pupil's sole attention should be directed the meaning of the syllable cede, and having to the manner in which the Gallic war was shown that in composition it generally sigconducted. A very little reflection, how-nifies to go, demand the signification of its ever, should be sufficient to show how erro- various compounds, precede, proceed, sucneous such a practice would be in either ceed, accede, recede, exceed, intercede. The case. The passages gone over in school | pupil will in this manner, acquire not only the way of education, and that his principal object in bringing him to us was to have him kept from the streets. When we first cast our eyes upon him, we must acknowledge that our emotions were nearly akin to those of the king of Israel, when Naaman the leper presented to him the letter of the king of Syria. His countenance was vacant, louring, and dejected; and his general aspect (if we may judge from our own first impressions) rather repulsive, than of a nature calculated to excite unmingled sym a much more distinct and lasting impression of the signification of the word in question, but a key also to a vast variety of other words in the language. This too he will do far more pleasingly and satisfactorily in the manner which is here recommended, than by being enjoined to commit them to memory from a vocabulary at home as a task. The latter practice, wherever it is introduced, is, we know, regarded by the children as an irksome drudgery; the former, on the contrary, is an amusement. The former makes a strong and lasting impres-pathy. He seemed quite indifferent about sion upon the mind; under the latter the information wished to be communicated, is too often learned merely as the task of the day, and obliterated by that of the next. It is very true that it would not be possible to go over every word of a lesson with the same minuteness, as that we have now instanced. A certain portion of time should therefore be set apart for this examination; and, after these explanations have been given, which are so necessary to the right understanding of the passage, such minute investigations only may be gone into as time will admit. It is no more essential that every word should be gone over in this way, than that every word should always be syntactically parsed. A single sentence well done may prove of the greatest service to the scholar in his future studies." every thing, and unwilling to be taken notice of, and continued in this state for some time after his introduction to the school. He could give no account of his age, but was, in point of height, as tall as any of the biggest boys in the school, who are from 12 to 15 years. It was found necessary to place him in the lowest class, among children of five or six. These, as might naturally be expected, when they found their gigantic class-fellow hardly able to keep pace with the dullest of themselves, and not venturing to resent any indignities offered him even by the youngest, began to entertain towards him feelings of no very high respect, and to annoy him with every kind of little childish tricks; very different were the feelings and behaviour of the elder scholars. They not only were at pains to protect Jamie from every insult, but also, latterly, took the deepest interest in his with an eye at once of eager curiosity and of tender affection, while they also made him the subject of their own frequent conversaobviously as an unwilling task; not long tion. At first he entered upon his lessons afterwards, however, we were led to think that the explanations given him by his monitor, of the little words which he was now able to read, and the account of the cated, though they could present little things themselves which these words indi It is only matter of surprise to us, that so obvious and easy a mode of in-progress, which they anxiously watched teresting and instructing the youthful pupil, should have been so long overlooked, especially as the spirit and almost the details of this and other modern improvements in education were long since so ably enforced and illustrated in Dr. Watts' invaluable work on "The Improvement of the Mind :" but so slow is the dull and inert mass of society, pressed down as it is by habit and pre-novelty to any other of the same age, were judice, in receiving the leaven infused into it by some master-mind, that before the lump is thoroughly imbued with its influence, the means which first impregnated it are forgotten, and the whole appears like a novel discovery. We cannot withhold from our readers the follow ing striking example of the advantages of this method of teaching : "We regret that we have it not in our power to give any particulars of poor Jamie's' history, beyond those which fell under our own observation. His father, on introducing him to the school, candidly in- | formed the master, in our absence, that he had no expectation of his son profiting in listened to by him with considerable interest. Standing by accordingly one day, when the monitor was explaining to his class, that an ox was the animal they saw gave them beef, the writer of the present so often passing to the market, and which account turned round to Jamie, and asked him if he knew what an ox was? "Oh, ay," was his answer, "it sticks folk." This answer, simple as it was, had so much more in it of the nature of a gratuitous remark, than any thing else that had yet dropt from the same quarter, and seemed to give such pleasure to himself, that he did not lose the opportunity of bestowing upon it high commendation, which was immediately received with a smile of self-complacency that afforded us infinite satisfaction. That |