instances might be named. Surely the time is come for something special to be done for the young!

Let us glance for a moment at their number. With the statistics of the young generally we have at present nothing to do. We wish to limit the reader's attention to the number of the young directly and indirectly identified with our different schools and congregations. How vast the number! In some places they constitute the majority of our congregations; whilst in others they form the proportion of a third, or one-half, of our hearers. Numbers have their influence on We cannot gaze on a multitude without emotion. Let us, then, think of the number of our young people, and we shall see that, forming, as they do, so large a proportion of our living resources, they have urgent claims on our attention and regard.

us.

Look at the stations they are to occupy, and the dutics they are to perform in future life. The stations now sustained by adults, and the duties now performed by them, will pass in the course of time into the hands of our young people. In this sense, instead of the fathers will be the children. The latter will soon be the worldthe parents, men and women of mankind. They will be the domestics, operators, mechanics, and tradesmen, when those who now perform these duties shall be no more. Where are the dwellers in our towns and villages forty years hence and upwards? Behold some of them within the walls of Sabbath schools and chapels every Lord's day. And, be it remembered, it depends on present exertions whether they shall rise into public life qualified by knowledge, piety, and zeal, for their important trust, or ignorant, ungodly, and apathetic about any thing in which either the glory of God or their own best interests are concerned! It depends, we hold, on the efforts of the middle aged, and aged, whether our young friends shall prove themselves honourable members of our body, energetic and enlightened supporters of true religion, or rise into men and women the bold and daring foes of every thing that is sacred.

Let not our tradesmen and men of wealth neglect the young. On them they are in many respects to be dependent. They are in many ways to contribute towards the supply of their wants. They are to have their comfort and their safety to some extent in their power, to have their failings and their follies at their mercy. Their property must be under their charge. Their reputation must be in their keeping!

What, we ask the affluent and intelligent amongst us, is the race whom you would wish to train for situations of trust, and for stations like these? Is it nothing even for your own welfare-and at present we speak of nothing more-is it enough for your own welfare, that they with whom in one form or other you must be connected so closely, shall just have a knowledge of the first elements of an English education, whilst to all religious principle and moral feeling they are utter strangers?

Expect not, if you neglect the young, that you can mould their riper years to your wish. Under the unerring government of God no momentous duty can be neglected without a just recompense of reward. If we care not for the young, a race will rise up around us regardless of our connexional interests and of the religion of Jesus; a race from whose aspect our whole soul would shrink with the utmost horror.

Notwithstanding our lapsed and fallen condition, evil does not at once exert unbounded sway; and that space may be afforded for the application of christian training, our natural depravity is not suffered to acquire maturity but by a gradual process. Jehovah has impressed this law upon sin itself, that he may encourage and invite the efforts of parents, ministers, and church members in behalf of the young. To our people at large then we say, Let the young have a warm place in your affections, and make them the unceasing objects of your christian zeal. Suffer not the vivacious period of youth, the bland and impressible season, when permanent habits are forming, to pass away without some special efforts to improve them morally and spiritually. They are to some extent the creatures of imitation. Hold up, then, the example of whatsoever things are pure, and honest, and and lovely, and of good report. If there be any virtue, any praise, let it be exhibited to the understanding, let it meet the eye, let it be urged upon the heart.

Shall the auspicious season when the impressions are more likely to be marked by clearness and permanence, slide by, without being turned to the great purpose for which not only youth, but life, and health, and being are sustained? Perish the thought!

Purpose now, in the name of God, and in humble reliance on his Spirit's agency, that our young people shall have a larger share in your efforts and prayers. To save their souls from death, let this be a commanding object with you. To make them active members of the Church, and industrious and peaceable members of civil society, are important matters indeed; but they must ever be held subordinate to their eternal welfare. To save them from death is the object never to be forgotten. This should stand prominently out before the eye of every officer and member in the Connexion, as the grand aim of all their labours: nor ought they ever to content themselves with anything short of its attainment. While, then, you look with affection's eye on the young, reflect that each of them is possessed of an immortal spirit—a soul whose value is greater than that of myriads of worlds. Try deeply to impress them with a sense of their thorough depravity, of the necessity of their being born again, and of the need in which they stand of a Saviour. Open before them the book of God, and confirm your statements by its disclosures; and when their hearts are agitated with grief, and the tear of contrition starts in their eye on account of their sinfulness, O! then seize the happy opportunity of leading them to Jesus, unfolding to them his excellency, suitableness, and willingness as a Saviour; and teaching them to rely implicitly on his merits for their everlasting welfare. Thus will you confer on them a benefit, and an honour, contrasted with which all the fading honours of this world are unworthy of a name.

Were the interests of the young duly and perseveringly attended to, the Connexion would be immediately benefited. On this subject there cannot be two opinions. Supposing the young of the two past centuries had been what early religious and efficient training might have made them. Suppose that our fathers and forefathers for generations past had been as mentally and morally cultivated as we wish our children and successors to be-that parents had wisely directed their offspring, teachers had piously instructed their pupils, masters had religiously watched over their servants, and ministers

and church members had been zealously affected in favour of the young, what might not, humanly speaking, have been the meliorated condition of the Churches of Christ? Growing up in the knowledge and love of God, they might have prepared the way for the wider and more effectual diffusion of the Gospel; and by their influence have handed down to their sons and daughters, and their successors, impressions of the religion of the cross which would have enlightened, raised, and purified the present generation. Had this supposition been realized, the state of the christian Church must now have presented a most attractive aspect, and we should have been more fitted to uphold the interests of godliness. The men of this day, being the youth of the past, would have been delivered in a great measure from the thraldom of worldly secularities, piety would have obtained among all orders, and the doxology would have been sung by countless thousands of swelling, bursting, and grateful hearts: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!"

We repeat the idea. Due attention to our young people will conduce, under God, to connexional prosperity. Were the writer of these lines asked how, or in what way, may the interests of the Connexion be effectually and permanently secured, he would reply, Attend to the young. There are present to the mental eye of the writer circuits and societies where clerical intolerance and ecclesiastical bigotry, or the superior strength and influence of other christian churches, have retarded our progress. Under such circumstances, to look for much increase from the affluent portion of the inhabitants, is at present all but hopeless. What, then, is to be done? To what quarter shall the friends turn their attention, and what means shall they try to improve their congregations, and to fill the pews, which bribery and intimidation on the one hand have partially emptied or kept empty, or the numerical strength and influence of other bodies have in some degree diverted the attention of the public from us. We reply, Look well to the young. Some of the most efficient and prosperous churches of the present day are remarkable for their devotion to the interests of the young. Of a living preacher in the Independent body it is said, the great secret, under God, of his prosperity is, his untiring attention to the juvenile portion of his hearers. Let, then, Bible classes be formed, and weekly meetings be held, with a view to the mental and moral improvement of the young. Let occasional sermons be preached, and frequent appeals be made to them, and let the prayers offered in the pulpit be marked by a deep concern for their welfare, and good will be the result.

The observation of twenty years and upwards has furnished the writer with many instances in which the most disastrous consequences have followed a neglect of the young. Promising youths in our schools and different congregations, unnoticed by ministers and members of the church, have been led to withdraw from our chapels, and have either gone to other sanctuaries or relinquished all union with professing Christians.

We appeal to our people at large in behalf of our juvenile friends. For the present, we appeal to them solely on the ground of connexional attachment and anxiety for connexional prosperity. We assume the existence of such attachment and such solicitude. The cause of the Connexion is the cause of Christ. The interests of His cause, as

they stand intimately connected with the glory of God and the welfare of the human race, are far dearer to the Christian than any personal or domestic concerns. The cause of Christ being thus dear to him, it will follow that his exertions in its behalf will be vigorous and unremitting. Nor in these exertions can the young be safely neglected. To whom but them are we to look, under God, for conducting the affairs of the Connexion, defending her rights, sustaining her institutions, and perpetuating her privileges. In a short, a very short time, the generation that now is shall have ceased to live. The day is just at hand when it will be said of those who now live, "The fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?" On whom, then, but the young, are we to depend for occupying the places of the fathers? What an argument does this consideration supply in favour of special efforts in behalf of our female friends? And what an inducement does it hold out to all our officers and members to see that such steps are taken, and such meetings instituted and spiritedly conducted, as shall carry home to the heart of any young person the conviction, "I am cared for. In my spiritual and eternal well-being, the officers and members of the Methodist New Connexion are deeply interested."-P. T. GILTON.

[The above excellent address will, we doubt not, be read with interest and profit; but we want practical results as well as good impressions, and permanent benefits as well as immediate blessings. How may this be effected? How may the design of this address be answered? One likely means will be, to make a searching inquiry into the spiritual state of our schools a regular matter of business at each quarterly meeting; and at least once each quarter to devote one Leaders' meeting entirely to the same important inquiry. In some circuits this is done already. Why not in all?-EDITOR.]

THE THEORY OF CHANCE REFUTED BY NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

We are told that all the phenomena of Nature are the productions of Chance. But we reply, in the first instance, by demanding, What is Chance? It is not a substance, it is not an attribute; and if neither, it cannot be the origin of nature, for it has no substantive existence. If it be replied, Chance is the mode of nature's operating-that nature is ever active and prolific, and must ever be producing something; but that her operations are such as we see them to be, is merely fortuitous. Now, of the truth of this hypothesis we demand a proof. If Chance mean anything, it means the absence of design; and the absence of design can only be proved by the prevalence of universal disorder and confusion; and by the absence of adaptation of means to ends, nay, by the total absence of all existence of either means or ends. Will the atheist un

dertake to show that there is nothing in nature but a chaos of disorder, confusion, anomalies, and contradictions? Will he in seriousness be responsible to show to his disciples that in all nature there is no such thing as adaptation of means to ends, or rather that there are neither means nor ends-that all nature's operations are random, isolated, and unconnected efforts? He is bound to do this, or give up his theory as untenable. He will never undertake this formidable task. Let us, then, look into nature for ourselves, and see if there be no proof of order, harmony, constancy, law, adaptation, and consequent design; and if either our senses or our reason can be relied on, we shall find demonstrations of these at every step in our inquiry. When the simple Arab was interrogated, "How do you know there is a God?" he replied, "In the same way that