Teach the child to pray against drunkenness, as he would against murder, lying, and theft; shew him that all these crimes are often comprised in this one, which in too many cases has been the fruitful parent of them all.

When the boy grows to be a man, and mingles in the world of men, he will not easily forget the lesson impressed on his young heart. He will remember his early prayers against this terrible vice – will recall that disgusting spectacle – and will naturally shrink from the same contamination. Should he be overcome by temptation, the voice of conscience will plead with him in such decided tones that she will be heard, and he will be ashamed of becoming the idiot thing he once feared and loathed.

THE DRUNKARD’S RETURN.

“Oh! ask not of my morn of life,
    How dark and dull it gloom’d o’er me;
Sharp words and fierce domestic strife,
    Robb’d my young heart of all its glee,
The sobs of one heart-broken wife.
    Low, stifled moans of agony,
That fell upon my shrinking ear,
In hollow tones of woe and fear;
As crouching, weeping, at her side,
    I felt my soul with sorrow swell,
In pity begg’d her not to hide
    The cause of grief I knew too well;
Then wept afresh to hear her pray
That death might take us both away!

“Away from whom? – Alas! what ill
    Press’d the warm life-hopes from her heart?
Was she not young and lovely still?
    What made the frequent tear-drops start
From eyes, whose light of love could fill
    My inmost soul, and bade me part
    From noisy comrades in the street,
To kiss her cheek, so cold and pale,
    To clasp her neck, and hold her hand,
And list the oft-repeated tale
    Of woes I could not understand;
Yet felt their force, as, day by day,
I watch’d her fade from life away.

“And he, the cause of all this woe,
    Her mate – the father of her child,
In dread I saw him come and go,
    With many an awful oath reviled;
And from harsh word, and harsher blow,
    (In answer to her pleadings mild,
I shrank in terror, till I caught
From her meek eyes th’ unwhisper’d thought –
    ’Bear it, my Edward, for thy mother’s sake!
He cares not, in his sullen mood,
    If this poor heart with anguish break.’
That look was felt, and understood
By her young son, thus school’d to bear
His wrongs, to soothe her deep despair.

“Oh, how I loath’d him! – how I scorn’d
    His idiot laugh, or demon frown, –
His features bloated and deform’d;
    The jests with which he sought to drown
The consciousness of sin, or storm’d,
    To put reproof or anger down.
Oh, ’tis a fearful thing to feel
Stern, sullen hate, the bosom steel
    ’Gainst one whom nature bids us prize
The first link in her mystic chain;
    Which binds in strong and tender ties
The heart, while reason rules the brain,
    And mingling love with holy fear,
    Renders the parent doubly dear.

“I cannot bear to think how deep
    The hatred was I bore him then;
But he has slept his last long sleep,
    And I have trod the haunts of men;
Have felt the tide of passion sweep
    Through manhood’s fiery heart, and when
By strong temptation toss’d and tried,
I thought how that lost father died;
    Unwept, unpitied, in his sin;
Then tears of burning shame would rise,
    And stern remorse awake within
A host of mental agonies.
    He fell – by one dark vice defiled;
    Was I more pure – his erring child?

“Yes – erring child; – but to my tale.
    My mother loved that lost one still,
From the deep fount which could not fail
    (Through changes dark, from good to ill,)
Her woman’s heart – and sad and pale,
    She yielded to his stubborn will;
Perchance she felt remonstrance vain, –
The effort to resist gave pain.
    But carefully she hid her grief
From him, the idol of her youth;
And fondly hoped, against belief,
    That her deep love and stedfast truth
Would touch his heart, and win him back
From Folly’s dark and devious track.

“Vain hope! the drunkard’s heart is hard as stone,
    No grief disturbs his selfish, sensual joy;
His wife may weep, his starving children groan,
    And Poverty with cruel gripe annoy:
He neither hears, nor heeds their famish’d moan,
    The glorious wine-cup owns no base alloy.
Surrounded by a low, degraded train,
His fiendish laugh defiance bids to pain;
    He hugs the cup – more dear than friends to him –
Nor sees stern ruin from the goblet rise,
    Nor flames of hell careering o’er the brim,
The lava flood that glads his bloodshot eyes
    Poisons alike his body and his soul,
    Till reason lies self-murder’d in the bowl.

“It was a dark and fearful winter night,
    Loud roar’d the tempest round our hovel home;
Cold, hungry, wet, and weary was our plight,
    And still we listen’d for his step to come.
My poor sick mother! –’twas a piteous sight
    To see her shrink and shiver, as our dome
Shook to the rattling blast; and to the door
She crept, to look along the bleak, black moor.
    He comes – he comes! – and, quivering all with dread,
She spoke kind welcome to that sinful man.
    His sole reply, –’Get supper – give me bread!’
Then, with a sneer, he tauntingly began
    To mock the want that stared him in the face,
    Her bitter sorrow, and his own disgrace.

“‘I have no money to procure you food,
    No wood, no coal, to raise a cheerful fire;
The madd’ning cup may warm your frozen blood –
    We die, for lack of that which you desire!’
She ceased, – erect one moment there he stood,
    The foam upon his lip; with fiendish ire
He seized a knife which glitter’d in his way,
And rush’d with fury on his helpless prey.
    Then from a dusky nook I fiercely sprung,
The strength of manhood in that single bound:
    Around his bloated form I tightly clung,
And headlong brought the murderer to the ground.
    We fell – his temples struck the cold hearth-stone,
    The blood gush’d forth – he died without a moan!

“Yes – by my hand he died! one frantic cry
    Of mortal anguish thrill’d my madden’d brain,
Recalling sense and mem’ry. Desperately
    I strove to raise my fallen sire again,
And call’d upon my mother; but her eye
    Was closed alike to sorrow, want, and pain.
Oh, what a night was that! – when all alone
I watch’d my dead beside the cold hearth-stone.
    I thought myself a monster, – that the deed
To save my mother was too promptly done.
    I could not see her gentle bosom bleed,
And quite forgot the father, in the son;
    For her I mourn’d – for her, through bitter years,
    Pour’d forth my soul in unavailing tears.

“The world approved the act; but on my soul
    There lay a gnawing consciousness of guilt,
A biting sense of crime, beyond control:
    By my rash hand a father’s blood was spilt,
And I abjured for aye the death-drugg’d bowl.
    This is my tale of woe; and if thou wilt
Be warn’d by me, the sparkling cup resign;
A serpent lurks within the ruby wine,
    Guileful and strong as him who erst betray’d
The world’s first parents in their bowers of joy.
    Let not the tempting draught your soul pervade;
It shines to kill, and sparkles to destroy.
    The drunkard’s sentence has been seal’d above, –
    Exiled for ever from the heaven of love!”

FREE SCHOOLS – THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION

“Truth, Wisdom, Virtue – the eternal three,
Great moral agents of the universe –
Shall yet reform and beautify the world,
And render it fit residence for Him
In whom these glorious attributes combined,
To render perfect manhood one with God!”

                                                            S.M.

There is no calculating the immense benefit which the colony will derive from the present liberal provision made for the education of the rising generation.

A few years ago schools were so far apart, and the tuition of children so expensive, that none but the very better class could scrape money enough together to send their children to be instructed. Under the present system, every idle ragged child in the streets, by washing his face and hands, and presenting himself to the free school of his ward, can receive the same benefit as the rest.

What an inestimable blessing is this, and how greatly will this education of her population tend to increase the wealth and prosperity of the province! It is a certain means of a calling out and making available all the talent in the colony; and as, thanks be to God, genius never was confined to any class, the poor will be more benefited by this wise and munificent arrangement than the rich.

These schools are supported by a district tax, which falls upon the property of persons well able to pay it; but avarice and bigotry are already at work, to endeavour to deprive the young of his new-found blessing. Persons grumble at having to pay this additional tax. They say, “If poor people want their children taught, let them pay for it: their instruction has no right to be forced from our earnings.”

What a narrow prejudice is this – what miserable, shortsighted policy! The education of these neglected children, by making them better citizens, will in the long run prove a great protection both to life and property.

Then the priests of different persuasions lift up their voices because no particular creed is allowed to be taught in the seminaries, and exclaim –“The children will be infidels. These schools are godless and immoral in the extreme.” Yes; children will be taught to love each other without any such paltry distinctions as party and creed. The rich and the poor will meet together to learn the sweet courtesies of a common humanity, and prejudice and avarice and bigotry cannot bear that.

There is a spirit abroad in the world and an evil spirit it is – which through all ages has instigated the rich to look down with contemptuous feelings of superiority on the humble occupations and inferior circumstances of the poor. Now, that this spirit is diametrically opposed to the benevolent precepts of Christianity, the fact of our blessed Lord performing his painful mission on earth in no higher capacity than that of a working mechanic, ought sufficiently to show. What divine benevolence – what god-like humility was displayed in this heroic act! Of all the wonderful events in his wonderful history, is there one more astonishing than this –

“That Heaven’s high Majesty his court should keep
In a clay cottage, by each blast controll’d, –
That Glory’s self should serve our hopes and fears,
And free Eternity submit to years?”

What a noble triumph was this, over the cruel and unjust prejudices of mankind! It might truly be termed the divine philosophy of virtue. This condescension on the part of the great Creator of the universe, ought to have been sufficient to have rendered labour honourable in the minds of his followers; and we still indulge the hope, that the moral and intellectual improvement of mankind will one day restore labour to her proper pedestal in the temple of virtue.

The chosen disciples of our Great Master – those to whom he entrusted the precious code of moral laws that was destined to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, and reform a degraded world – were poor uneducated men. The most brilliant gems are often enclosed in the rudest incrustations; and He who formed the bodies and souls of men, well knew that the most powerful intellects are often concealed amidst the darkness and rubbish of uneducated minds. Such minds, enlightened and purified by his wonder-working Spirit, He sent forth to publish his message of glad tidings through the earth.

The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men. Nature, reason, and Christianity, recognise no other. Pride may say nay; but pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth. Wealth, in a hard, abstract point of view, can never make any. Take away the wealth from an ignorant man, and he remains just the same being he was before he possessed it, and is no way bettered from the mere circumstance of his having once been rich. But let that wealth procure for him the only true and imperishable riches – knowledge, and with it the power to do good to himself and others, which is the great end of moral and religious training – and a mighty structure is raised which death itself is unable to destroy. The man has indeed changed his nature, and is fast regaining the resemblance he once bore to his Creator.

The soul of man is no rank, sex, or colour. It claims a distinction far above all these; and shall we behold its glorious energies imprisoned in the obscene den of ignorance and want, without making the least effort to enlighten its hideous darkness?

It is painful to reflect upon the vast barren wilderness of human intellect which on every side stretches around us to know that thousands of powerful minds are condemned by the hopeless degradation of their circumstances to struggle on in obscurity, without one gleam of light. What a high and noble privilege has the Almighty conferred upon the wealthy and well-educated portion of mankind, in giving them the means of reclaiming and cultivating those barren minds, and of lifting them from the mire of ignorance in which they at present wallow, to share with them the moral dignity of thinking men!

A small portion of the wealth that is at present bestowed upon mere articles of luxury, or in scenes of riot and dissipation, would more than effect this great purpose. The education of the poorer classes must add greatly to the well-being and happiness of the world, and tend to diminish the awful amount of crimes and misery, which up to the present moment has rendered it a vale of tears.

The ignorance of the masses must, while it remains, for ever separate them from their more fortunate brethren. Remove this stumbling block out of the way, and the hard line of demarcation which now divides them will soften, and gradually melt away. Their supposed inferiority lies in their situation alone. Turn to the history of those great men whom education has rescued from the very lowest walks of life, and you will find a mighty host, who were in their age and day the companions, the advisers, the friends of princes – men who have written their names with the pen and sword upon the pillars of time, and, if immortality can exist in a world of constant change, have been rendered immortal by their words or deeds.

Let poverty and bigotry do their utmost to keep such spirits, while living, in the shades of obscurity, death, the great equalizer, always restores to its possessors the rights of mind, and bids them triumph for ever over the low prejudices of their fellow-men, who, when reading the works of Burns, or gazing on the paintings of Raphael, reproach them with the lowliness of their origin; yea, the proudest who have taste to appreciate their glorious creations, rejoice that genius could thus triumph over temporary obstacles.

It has often been asserted by the rich and nobly-born, that if the poorer classes were as well educated as themselves, it would render them familiar and presumptuous, and they would no longer pay to their superiors in station that deference which must exist for the well-being of society. We view the subject with far other eyes, and conclude from analogy, that that which has conferred such incalculable benefits on the rich, and helped mainly to place them in the position they now hold, could not be detrimental to the poor. The man who knows his duty, is more likely to perform it well than the ignorant man, whose services are compulsory, and whose actions are influenced by the moral responsibility which a right knowledge must give.

My earnest wish for universal education involves no dislike to royal rule, or for those distinctions of birth and wealth which I consider necessary for the well-being of society. It little matters by what name we call them; men of talent and education will exert a certain influence over the minds of their fellow-men, which will always be felt and acknowledged in the world if mankind were equalized to-morrow. Perfect, unadulterated republicanism, is a beautiful but fallacious chimera which never has existed upon the earth, and which, if the Bible be true, (and we have no doubts on the subject,) we are told never will exist in heaven.