lessons were explained, and the most happy results were seen in the true conversion and great moral improvement of many of the children.

As the efforts of good men and women extended, the institution began to assume definite form, and the plans of God in regard to it became more evident. It was seen at length to arise directly out of the Church, to be a legitimate outgrowth of Christianity, an institution of God, and thoroughly organic as a grand department of missionary labor and effective discipleship.

The Sunday school thus comes in appropriately to supplement the public schools. It is free to all, it uses in a proper manner holy time, its labors are a noble charity, and it becomes more eminently and distinctly religious than the common school can be. It is universally known that children who attend these schools will be taught sacred history and geography, the fall and sinfulness of man, the redemption of the world by Jesus Christ, the divine agency of the Holy Spirit in the production of goodness, the regeneration of man, and the hope of everlasting life; the extreme wickedness of idolatry, theft, murder, adultery, and Sabbath-breaking; the propriety and duty of penitence, and faith in the Saviour of the world; membership in the Church of Christ, and a life of strict honesty, holiness, and love. They will be gradually raised to noble views of God and duty, to the highest conceptions of private and public virtue; and from purest motives they will be led, so far as practicable, to become genuine patriots and broad-minded philanthropists. And all this, not from mere human instruction, but from the legitimate appropriation of forces coming directly from God in answer to many fervent prayers, resulting in true conviction for sin, and genuine conversion by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So far as this extends, the reformation, both of character and manners, among these children, becomes radical, and truly astonishing. The legitimate result is not to make

them Sunday scholars of another grade, not to produce any new independent organization, but to lead them directly into the visible Church of God. From the Sunday schools come the best instructed, most intelligent, reliable Christians of the age; and we behold here the grand nursery of the Church of the future.

But a still wider influence goes out from this great providential institution. On the sabbath, the education of the week is extended into its legitimate sphere, imbued more deeply with the spirit of right and of justice; and its defects are measurably supplied. Like a diffusible stimulant, the inspirations of the Sunday school enter every organ and tissue of the body politic; and who would question its healthgiving power? Through the more thoughtful and devout, negligent and wicked children come to feel the wrong of sin, and the duty of a holy life. Through the children, the parents come to be largely impressed with the value of the Bible, the worth of the soul, and the need of a Saviour. Thus, through the Sunday school, quiet missionary influences reach the courts and lanes, the garrets and cellars, of our crowded cities; the sick and the poor are relieved, and the ignorant are instructed; not unfrequently other schools, and even churches, are founded; thus showing the pioneer agency of this institution in the hands of the Church. Young people learn to love the sabbath and the privileges of the sanctuary, the Bible-class, and the company of the good, and are here comparatively guarded against the attractive and ruinous influences of popular sinful pleasures. Thus teachers and officers are provided for Sunday schools, and the institution re-acts powerfully and usefully upon itself. Thus scholars, writers, professional men, and statesmen become imbued with the spirit of truth and justice, and the great public functions of popular sovereignty become healthful, free, and powerful in their action; a broad-minded philanthropy becomes prevalent, and at length national.

We affirm that these are not only the legitimate, but the

actual historical results of thorough Sunday-school instruction, under the guidance of the Church, as a part of the great whole of religious influence, and a method of moral power now clearly providentially indicated.

It requires, therefore, no great sagacity to see that the institution has already become a part and a mode of the national life; that it has ceased to be experimental, and has become historical; and that both those who make and those who write history must recognize this vitalizing force of the modern ages. Those who ignore or neglect this great power in this last half of the nineteenth century are unhistorical. And especially must the present and future development of the Republic of Liberty depend upon this and all other forms of culture which purify the heart, correct the judgment, and recognize God as the great Sovereign of mind, and Source of moral power.

Let it not be deemed strange, therefore, that this institution is slowly correcting its own mistakes, gradually perfecting its course of study, and making its literature; and that great public men in the United States, governors and judges, senators and assembly-men, learned gentlemen and splendid women, as well as the most humble, are sitting down humbly every Lord's Day before their classes of little ones, rich and poor, to give and receive lessons from the word of God.

The Sunday school is one grand reliance for the Christian culture of freemen, and the constitution of a pure, exalted statesmanship. It is, we repeat, truly national in the United States of America.

In 1786, Bishop Asbury, of the Methodist - Episcopal Church, established the first Sunday school proper on the Western Continent. In 1861, the number of Sunday-school children in the Republic was estimated to be considerably above three millions. Since that time, the numbers in attendance have increased rapidly; the Sunday-school force of the Methodists alone having reached over a million and a half.

It is even more important to state, that the institution is revealing more distinctly its organic life. It rises up as the great training department of the Church, full of energy and missionary power. Its graded classes and normal discipline give it order in "theory and practice," and secure permanence as well as rapid development. Let American statesmen and philanthropists cherish the Sunday school.

ACADEMIES.

The word "academy," as commonly used in this country, has a peculiar meaning. It applies to intermediate institutions between common schools and colleges. We have seen, that, in our public schools, the highest grade reaches the academies, and becomes, to some extent, a scientific and classical school, actually free to all. The growing intelligence of our children and young people of both sexes, however, requires institutions of higher grade; and they are found in nearly every county, and especially at the centres of distinct communities, in buildings of great beauty and convenience, with regular gradations of studies and classes. They are under the direction of teachers and executive officers generally well educated, sometimes masters of their respective sciences and of the art of teaching; thus furnishing to our more aspiring and promising young people a sound symmetrical education, which answers a good purpose for business and professional life, or a preparation for college.

In all these institutions, the languages, the natural sciences, and mathematics are taught, and in some of them with great thoroughness. Their students number from perhaps thirty to five hundred each, many of whom remain from one to three years, and others for even a longer period, going through a practical or preparatory course of great value, and securing a mental drill and development which give them great power in the future. The number of students now annually issuing from our academies, seminaries, and

collegiate institutes, is becoming so large as to perceptibly elevate the average range of general intelligence and the standard of national character. Germany might as well do without her gymnasium as America without her academy.

These institutions are sometimes founded and supported by the counties and municipalities, and partially endowed by the State; but much more generally they are erected by the churches. The great Christian denominations, while they omit from their courses of instruction and discipline every thing which is peculiarly sectarian, feel the obligation imperative to provide liberally for the education of their own children and the general public under the thorough transforming influence of Christianity. They insist that true education must recognize God and his holy word; must present Christ in the atonement, and the Holy Ghost in regeneration, as the restorer of heart and intellect and volition to their originally-intended righteousness. While, therefore, they seek thus to guard against infidel demoralization in the higher training of their young men and women, they look for the divine blessing upon their schemes of science and true wisdom.

The churches expend large sums of money, freely given by the rich and the poor, to build, and, at least in part, endow, these institutions. It is a form of Christian enterprise in which their very best minds, lay and clerical, expend their most sacrificing and consecrated efforts, not unfrequently for a lifetime, actually to rear the national fabric in soundness, strength, and beauty. These schools, to a greater or less extent under the patronage of the evangelical churches, have ceased to be regarded as ecclesiastical establishments for local or sectarian purposes, and come to be considered, as they really are to a large degree, great public vitalizing forces in every commonwealth for the proper culture of the rising generation, the growth of the State, and the exaltation of the Republic.

Thus, in the most enlightened as well as the darkest age