ed by going over with a problem in Geometry, or a chapter in Chemistry, than by any tale that is told or can be told. Not, however, that the tale is to be rigidly excluded; but only that something else, in its place and time, is to be faithfully introduced. a But in the next place, it is said, that there is a want of time for the kind of reading that I propose. Heavy cares and light entertainments must usurp the whole of life. In reply, I have only to say, that for most persons this may be as they choose. They can spend less time in business, and still have enough property to satisfy all reasonable desires; or they can give up some of their lighter, for deeper and better reading. They can venture to say, "I have not read the last new Novel," declaration, I confess, which I have come to look upon with great respect, when proceeding from persons who are really reading and improving themselves. It seems to say that they have had something so much better to do, as not to have found time to do that. It is a goodly and promising reverse of the common plea which I am considering. It says, "I must have time for books that do me good, and I cannot always find time for useless reading." Useless reading, I repeat; for I desire any one to tell me what good he has ever got from perusing, for instance, Bulwer's novels; which many are reading at the rate of six or eight volumes a year, and so can find time for nothing else. I have read his late double novel,- Maltravers and the sequel, because that in it Mr. Bulwer proposed to give his great view and summing up of the philosophy of life. And what is the amount of it? His hero is first guilty of a gross moral offence, for which a sneering apology at all virtue is made; and then he lives, through the first part, a useless life of selfish pride and disdain. In the second part, his life is the same, and the whole interest of it turns upon a father's falling in love, unconsciously, with his own daughter, a constant shock to the reader's moral feeling, of which the writer seems wholly unaware. At length, indeed, the fact proves to be otherwise, it is not his own daughter with whom the father has fallen in love, but he is led for a while to suppose so, and then is thrown into unnatural and unnecessary agonies at what was no fault of his ; as if that would make a moral reparation to the reader for the violence that has been done to his just and honorable sentiments throughout the whole book. And the end of all is, that the hero's pride is broken down by this terrible - disclosure and by the violent death of his rival, means about as natural and moral as an earthquake. The moral of the story is, as if we should say that a man was converted from a vicious and useless life, by a tornado, that crushed his house in pieces. And for reading like this—the Circulating Libraries being witness there is time enough. But no time for philosophy, -no time for real thought, no time for true accomplishment, - no time for thorough acquisition of knowledge. How many poor families are there in Germany, deeply skilled in music, well acquainted with some or other branches of science, — and indeed, in intellectual culture, before most of the fashionable and wealthy families in this country! And this too, a country of abundance, of a free and untaxed soil and gainful traffic! "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Aye, it is faith only, faith in that which does not eat, nor drink, nor die, that we want. If to live is only to get and keep, to accumulate and enjoy, then there is no argument for high intellectual culture; then such culture, useless, visionary attainment, must be left for dreaming students, and secluded anchorites, that know nothing about the world, forsooth, and are worth nothing to it. But if there is a mind within us, worth more than all the world, and if there is a just and due interest in it; if knowledge, simple, quiet, homebred knowledge be counted to be worth more than all the gains of wealth, and the flaunting robes of fashion, then will all difficulties vanish before the unconquerable zeal for improvement. So has knowledge almost always been cultivated and genius nurtured, that is to say, amidst difficulties. Where did Franklin first cultivate the knowledge that at length bore him to the heights of fame? In a printing office. Where did Bowditch study the mathematics? In early life, on ship-board, and ever after, in hours snatched from the cares of a busy life. How did Ferguson begin to study astronomy? Tending sheep in Scotland; lying on his back upon the bare earth, and gazing upon the heavens,-mapping out the constellations by means of a simple string stretched from hand to hand, with beads upon it, which, sliding back and forth, enabled him to ascertain the relative distances of the stars. Where did young Faraday commence his studies, still young, and yet the successor in London to the celebrated Davy? He began his chemical studies, a poor boy, in an apothecary's shop. Sir Richard Arkwright, who was knighted for the improvements he introduced into cotton-spinning, and whose beautiful seat upon the Wye is one of the fairest in England, was a barber till he was thirty years old. And at this moment, there is a man in New England who can read fifty languages, who was apprenticed, who has always worked, and who still works, as a blacksmith ! But it is time that I should bring this notice of examples, and indeed, this essay, to a close. Many will say, I know, that they have not the genius of these distinguished men. But how, I ask, can they ever know whether they have a genius or not, so long as they suffer their powers to be buried under a mass of useless reading! Read one good, strong book, — study one problem, one point in philosophy, and you may find that you have powers of which you never suspected the existence. If I might be allowed to propose and affix a motto to this essay, it would be LESS READING AND MORE STUDY. Let me add one word more. Is there any young person entering into life, -entering upon a world over which have passed six thousand years of human experience, -just coming into an innumerable company of human beings, strangers to him yet? And are there any records of these ages and of these men? Can. he hear the sound of their footsteps, from the dim shores of antiquity? Will he not then listen? Will he not desire to know something of the great story of departed ages, of the fortunes of the Persian and the Palmyrene, of the Greek and Roman? And would he not, above all, gladly know something of the wisdom of the wise and wonderful among men? Would he not know what Socrates thought as he talked with Plato, what eloquence Cicero uttered in the Roman forum, or what sublime visions visited the study of Milton, or what sage precepts dropped from the tongue of Fenelon or Taylor? Surely, ordinary human curiosity is enough to prompt the desire of this knowledge. And no longer does it seek in vain. Here is the printing-press, the grand camera obscura of modern times; and all men and all ages stand before us as pictures. We sit in our houses, even the humblest, with the key of universal knowledge in our hands; on every side, at our will, curtain after curtain rises before us, - and all the treasures and glories of human thought, enterprise and action are unveiled to our view. To our very thresholds come the sages of all times, and proffer to us the ministrations of their VOL. XXVII. 3D s. VOL. IX. NO. I. 3 wisdom. What loftiness would be found in communing with them! what wisdom might be gathered from the tablets of old time! what inspiration from the quickening breath of universal knowledge! I look for a generation that shall understand its position and its privilege! 0. D. ART. II. The Christian Teacher, for April, 1839. London: containing the correspondence between the Clergymen and the Unitarian Ministers at Liverpool. Nine of the Lectures published on both sides. UNITARIANS seem to have inherited the sentence of Ishmael, (6 every man's hand is against us.' Our brethren will hardly allow that there is one point of sympathy between us and them. It must be admitted that we have an unshaken faith in our own system, for we are called on all sides to fight its battles. Differing on one or another point from all religious parties, we incur reproach from all. The advocates of the authority of tradition and antiquity murmur at the slights which we put upon the Fathers and the primitive customs of the Church, and we maintain against them that we know more about Christianity than these old Fathers did; and as to primitive customs, we scarcely give ourselves the trouble to dispute about what they really were, while we cover more ground by asserting that we have to do with them no further than we please. On these points we are at issue with the true descendants of the old Fathers, the men who have folios in their libraries, who buy up bodies of divinity, and know all about the councils of the Church. On the subject of discipline, there are three distinct parties who assail us with different weapons, Popes, Convocations, and Presbyteries. We care the less for these, indeed, for the weapons have been sadly blunted against each other before we feel them. And then as to that vast array of tenets, which have been brought under the protection of creeds, confessions, and covenants, every holyday and Saint's-day in the calendar may be kept as the anniversary of a contention with us. Plans of Christian Union, though seemingly designed with a full apprehension of all the varieties of Christian belief, and proposing a mantle of charity, apparently large enough to cover all who avow a Christian faith and labor for Christian ends, have, in every instance, most pointedly excluded Unitarians. The Gospel net, as it is drawn to the shore, evidently shows various specimens of bad and good, as the Savior predicted; but contrary to his authority, and very unwarrantably, the fishes have taken upon themselves the work of selection. After having been caught over and over again, and battered about by stronger fish, we are thrown back into the waters for revivification, or left high and dry upon the land. It is hard in most cases to trace the origin of each new controversy against us. In our own country it is called forth sometimes by the appointment of a theological professor, or by the return of the annual prayer meeting for the conversion or perversion (whichever it might prove to be) of our University, or by the sundering of an old congregation, or by a trial for heresy in another denomination, (for heresy invariably assumes a garment of light, and that of course is Unitarianism.) In Scotland, if a member of the Establishment, or even an orthodox dissenter from it, presumes, as in a late instance, to go to a Unitarian chapel, he is "awfully reproved" for his offence, as were the obdurate Indians, the playing urchins, and the giggling negroes, by our good fathers, at the Thursday Lecture. Then a new controversy will arise about the insidious and soul-destroying heresy of Unitarianism. In England some new cause of strife comes with every day. The repeal of acts and tests, which never should have been passed, makes openings in the body politic, through which the monster creeps; and the moment he shows head or tail, down come the blows both from those who have long been inside, and from those who have just been admitted there. The Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of London, with a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year, and an equal number of parishioners in one city who have no clothing to cover their nakedness, and a million more in the same city who are the subjects of no pastoral care, and have no opportunity of attending public worship, however much disposed for it, the spiritual head of this diocese proposes a plan for the erection of new and free metropolitan churches; and one of the arguments found most forcible is the check which will thus be put upon dissent and Unitarianism. Two venerable |