and supporting and promoting the principles which it implanted throughout the whole of our lives.

For, be it observed, if the faith which we profess was so efficacious as to control the natural depravity of the human mind, when it had been matured and become inveterate by habit, it cannot be unequal to restrain it in its earliest movements, its feeblest operations. That power which overcame the evil nature when it was "a strong man armed, and keeping his palace," which "took from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divided his spoils," can, assuredly, take captive that nature in its infant weakness and defencelessness. Those "weapons of warfare” which were "not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ"*__ those weapons are surely available to retain possession of the territory which they were. employed to invade, and served to conquer-to prevent the rebuilding of those "strong holds" which they were "mighty to pull down"

the reappearance of those towering imaginations against the rule and authority of God, which they overthrew from their loftiest and firmest elevations. The religion which so prevailed as to bring " every thought" of a stubborn manhood, and yet more stubborn age, "into captivity to the obedience of Christ," can doubtless form our childhood and discipline our youth to the service of the Redeemer. At least, it was predicted that the Messiah should thus secure his conquests over Satan, and erect a kingdom on the ruins of the usurper's empire. It was foreshown by the Prophet, that the Almighty would establish and perpetuate his dominion in the conscience:-" After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people."*

In urging this presumption of the effect of Christianity on the youthful mind, we do not forget that the truths which it discloses are more clearly understood, more powerfully grasped, in the full vigour of the faculties; and that so far the Gospel may appear to have naturally exhibited a superior efficacy in the reformation of the first Christians, to that which * Jer. xxxi. 33.

can be expected to attend it in the guidance and control of youth. But we need not stop to argue that men are, at all times, greatly more impeded, in their practical obedience of Christianity, by the power of immoral habits, than aided by the assent of a fully matured understanding to its reasonableness and value. Moreover, the opinions adopted in our advancing years, as well as the habitual cast of our reflections, are materially dependent on the knowledge acquired, and the sentiments formed in earlier life; and even the lessons of experience are read by the light of received conclusions. In truth, the fact that the Gospel opposed itself to prevailing practices and established opinions, is justly held to account for its rejection by many who lived at the period of its first promulgation; while, for the same reason, its reception by multitudes is, with equal justice, regarded as a signal testimony to the force of that evidence on which it was grounded.

We repeat, then, that it comports with the design of Christianity, and is agreeable to the nature of things, to regard the faithful Christian, "the man in Christ," to be a "new creature," in relation to that type of the human character which preceded the introduction

of the Gospel, and pertains to our nature in its ignorance of true religion; and not in relation to his personal experience in the former part of his life. Accordingly, we conclude that those err widely from the scope of the Gospel, who infer and enforce the absolute necessity of such a change in the mind of every individual as to constrain or allow him to say, in reference to his feelings and doings in past time :-"Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

We do not say that there are none-alas! we must admit and deplore that there are many-who stand in need of a change as great, it may be, virtually or substantially, as that which passed upon the first believers in Jesus Christ-many who, with the "form of godliness," the knowledge and profession of the Gospel, are wilfully strangers to its power in supplanting the love of this world by a desire of a spiritual and eternal good. But if a far larger portion of nominal Christians were of this description, so awful and melancholy a fact could furnish no reason or apology for asserting and preaching the necessity of an entire change in the human mind, as it grows and develops itself under the Christian dispensation. For this is tantamount to

affirming that God has not afforded us the means of becoming holy in our early years; and, so far from exalting Christianity in our esteem as a school of religious and moral discipline, is most unjustly to disparage it in comparison with the tutelage of the Mosaic institution. The subjects of that economy were commanded and encouraged to inform the mind in youth with the knowledge of the true God and his commandments, on the very reasonable presumption that it was greatly less difficult to mould the character to religion at that season than in mature age:"And thou shalt teach them" (the divine statutes) 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. "*" Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it."+-The disciples of that comparatively rude and merely preparatory system of divine instruction, were not left or allowed to suppose that the education of youth in religion would of necessity prove useless ; or that the earlier portion of a man's life, if it should result in any advantage of a religious Prov. xxii. 6.

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* Deut. vi. 7.