therefore, testifies he is not the God of that part which is dead, but of the soul, which never dies, and must immediately enter either into a state of happiness or of misery. This passage alone is sufficient to confound the first proposition (mentioned page 819), "That the soul dies with the body, or remains in a torpid state till the latter | is raised again, or recreated in an incorruptible state, at the consummation of all things." But there is one more passage, which I think must completely put to silence all who maintain this doctrine-" And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to his works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." This passage must also confirm the second proposition, to every reflecting mind, "That on the death of the body, the soul survives, and immediately goes, either to dwell with Jesus Christ and the saints in heaven, or else with Satan and the fallen angels in hell." It also at the same time eradicates the third, "That on quitting the body at its decease, it is immediately conveyed to a place called Hades, there to remain until the time of the resurrection." was, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." But let it be remembered, that I am not advocating the supposition, that the saints will immediately inherit the kingdom which is to be prepared for them, but that they will immediately be introduced into the heaven which now is, and immediately behold the face of Jesus Christ. From these few wandering remarks it may be deduced, that God has prepared a heaven, wherein dwelleth righteousness, in which the saints shall dwell with Christ and all his holy angels, until the judgment, then will be created a new heaven, perhaps greater in splendour, and superior in magnificence; this we infer from the remainder of the chapter, (Rev. xxi.) from which I have made several quotations. On the other hand, is prepared a place of torment for the wicked, which burns with fire and brimstone, until they are brought forth and receive the sentence, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Then shall they be thrust into hell, and dwell in greater tor ments throughout eternity. These, Sir, are a few collected remarks, for which I beg a place in your excellent miscellany.—Your humble servant, W. M. HIGGINS. Since the preceding article has been in our hands, we have received another, similar in character, from Z. Z.JA., but our pages being preoccupied, it is omitted until our next. COMMENDABLE CUSTOM IN HOLLAND. If the preceding quotation be carried on to the following chapter, it will give a full account of the place to which the saints are immediately conveyed, which appears to be the place where the angels and Jesus Christ himself are now residing, so that they will be immediately admitted into the presence of their Saviour." And I FELL, in his Tour of the Batavian saw a new heaven and a new earth: Republic, observes, that in Holland, for the first heaven and the first earth when a woman is brought to bed, a were passed away." Having then first bulletin is daily fixed to her house proved, that the spirit of man departs for a fortnight, (or longer, if she coninto some state of happiness or misery tinues so ill as to excite the solicitude immediately, as death lays his cold of her friends,) which contains a statehand upon him, by the passage now ment of the health of the mother and quoted, we must see that another the child. This bulletin is fastened heaven is provided for the angels, to a board ornamented with lace, prophets, and saints, where God him more or less rich, according to the self will be their light and shield. circumstances of the person lying-in. Your correspondent speaks of the and serves to answer the inquiries of dying thief, for the purpose of refuting her friends, and to prevent any unthe opinion of the materialist: I think necessary noise being made near the it may also be applied with equal door of the indisposed person. On justness to the opinion he has im- other occasions, when it is not a childbibed. For when the thief cried, bed case, the board on which the "Lord, remember me when thou com- bulletin is placed, appears without est into thy kingdom;" the answer any lace to adorn it. ON THE DUTY OF EARLY PARENTAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. (Concluded from col. 988.) GOOD and judicious parents will always be careful early to instil into the minds of their offspring, both by precept and example, those excellent principles and habits to be derived only from the Christian religion, which none can inculcate with so much advantage as themselves. In the first stages of unfolding reason, what incalculable benefits have not mothers, more particularly, in their power to bestow upon the pledges of their affection, in forming their tastes to every thing that is noble and beautiful in piety and virtue,-thus laying I the foundation, also, of a fine intellectual character. For we need not point out how intimately the moral sense is connected with a taste for what is noble and beautiful in nature, in letters, and in art. We ardently wish that more mothers, than we are afraid bestow much thought upon the subject, were convinced of this pleasing truth; what a harvest of good, and with little pains might they not thus prepare to reap, in the future honour and welfare of their children. And this remark is widely applicable to mothers of all ranks in life, and to their children of both sexes. For, let us only contemplate for a moment the result of such early maternal instruction throughout the various orders of the people, what an improved aspect might not society, in a short time, assume, from the humblest cottage to the loftiest mansions in the land. Villages, towns, and courts would no longer present the scenes they do,neglected education, which, in the former, induces bad principles, rapidly leading on to vice, to poverty, and to crime, would cease to be an agent of evil and wretchedness among the poor; while true nobility and virtue would occupy the place of corruption and servility in senates and in courts. 1 How many instances could we adduce, from humble life, of the excellent effects of this early religious tuition on the part of mothers, upon the future character of their children, sufficient to prove the justice of our reasoning--that, in becoming more general, it would greatly meliorate the condition and prospects of the people No. 72.-VOL. VI. at large. And if we look for its reSults in more elevated society, what a picture is afforded us in the early life and education of Sir William Jones, who, himself informs us, in the most grateful terms, and with all the candour of a great and good mind, that he was indebted for whatever was valuable and excellent in his character, no less as a scholar than as a man, to the early, kind, and judicious precepts of his mother. This account,-of such a mother and of such a son,-given in the history of his life, ought, we think, were the world inclined to profit by so noble an example, to be in the hands of every mother who moves in the middle or the higher walks of society. The beautiful picture of filial and maternal affection it affords,-of the early rise and progress of true piety, fostered by a mother's care, in the youthful mind,-and of the influence and connexion between moral and intellcctual pursuits,-renders it, independent of its religious merits, highly interesting, and worthy of the serious consideration of all mothers who feel as they ought in regard to the future honour and happiness of their children. For our own part, we are not ashamed to confess, that, after perusing it, and contrasting it with the usual routine of education among the higher classes, and the sad results attending upon such education, felt by all of the lower orders within their influence; we have been affected even to tears, at reflecting how few instances there are in which maternal solicitude has presented the world with such a bright and enduring example of its power. It was after perusing and contemplating the excellent effects attending such maternal care, that we were first led to indulge in these reflections, and to conclude that a mother, who, in the full possession of her health and understanding, refuses to perform her religious duties towards her offspring, and voluntarily neglects, or commits their early education to another's care, is as inexcusable, if not as unnatural, as she who discards her infant from her bosom, to imbibe some kindlier stream from the breast of an hireling. In both cases the victim of her unkindness may chance to escape; it may return uninjured from its nurse, or it may die for want of a mother's 3 Z cherishing. So it may chance to preserve its heart and spirit uncontaminated, or it may come back from school fraught with the seeds of vice, meanness, envy, and duplicity, which may obscure or destroy all its future prospects, or, with a ruined constitution, that may make the best enjoyments insipid and valueless. and expansion of mind, and prevent Is this, let us ask, a risk to be ha- that of a young man. He has a long career before him, to obliterate those prejudices or errors he may have acquired during his early tuition, which they cannot be said to have. In boys' schools, emulation may prove an useful though dangerous excitement to excel, shewing itself occasionally in mischief and tumult: but, in girls, this being prevented by greater constraint, it is more likely to give birth to envy and uncharitableness, than which there are indeed no feelings in a young mind more to be dreaded and guarded against. More especially, then, for girls, an early home education is to be preferred; and, we think, in many cases, it would prove of no small advantage to them, to possess the society of their fathers and brothers-to listen and to enjoy the conversation of sensible men, and mix with society of their own age in an easy and natural way, under the judicious eye of a mother or her assistant -free from the too formal shackles of an early school. Such society would serve, at the same time, to give them an elasticity BY WHICH THE ISLANDS OF THE MR. EDITOR. SIR,-The inquiry has frequently been ..... izbe met with in "Anecdotes of the E. B. swer, How was America peopled? "To me there appear to be two "THE tenth chapter of Genesis is one of the most ancient, one of the most authentic, and one of the most valuable records in the world. Its antiquity cannot be denied by any one in the least skilled in chronology. No person has ever questioned its authenticity; it is universally allowed to have been written by the author of the Pentateuch; and, as to its value, "Though the compass, and other it is inestimable, for it explains to us the origin of nations,-Medes, Assy-improvements in the art of sailing, rians, Persians, Grecians, Egyptians, Lydians, Syrians, all the mighty nations of antiquity, concerning whom the poets told senseless tales, and the historians gave but uncertain conjectures, (as may be seen by consulting Herodotus, and other writers of profane history,) these are all clearly described in sacred history as distinct scions springing from one common stock,-Noah. Bochart, Huetius, Goguet, Le Clerc, Bryant, and innumerable other authors, have treated this subject with such perspicuity, that it is a shame for any unbeliever to be ignorant of what they have said; and it will be impossible for him to deny the truth of their argumentation. They differ somewhat from each other as to the particular regions in which some of the grandsons of Noah were settled; but this general conclusion is established by them all, that all the nations of which history has given any account have originated from Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now this conclusion, as to the source from which all the continents were peopled, being established, (and I think it fully established, even if we take into account the Chinese, Japanese, and other Eastern nations,) why should we suffer a little difficulty, as to the manner in which the islands were peopled, to stagger our faith in scripture history? "If my memory does not fail me, it is related by Honorius, in his book • De Originibus Americanis,' that it was proposed by some superstitious people, as a question, which none but a man possessed by the devil can an have enabled the moderns to go from "Another manner in which islands may have become peopled, respects the manner in which they may have been formed; they may, in remote ages, have been connected with continents, and separated therefrom by inundations of the ocean, and having been peopled before they were separated, we are under no necessity of having recourse even to navigation as a mean of stocking them with inhabitants. 66 Had Great Britain been connected with France where the Straits of Dover now are, or with Ireland at the Mull of Galloway, we should have no difficulty in accounting for the peopling of Great Britain and Ireland. A junction of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean would make Africa an island; and if the isthmus of Darien should sink into the bowels of the earth, and although it appeared far too large for any man to gain an idea of its whole, he being but as a speck in comparison with it, yet the supernatural influence which had taken possession of my senses, gave me power to examine it as minutely as I could have done any other ball of very limited dimensions. America would be separated into two | islands, or into more than two, according to the height and extent of the inundation which would take place, on the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. I mention these circumstances, because it is probable that changes as great as these have taken place, and are now taking place on different places of the globe. Na- It was shadowed over by a kind of turalists are agreed that Iceland, which luminous atmosphere, that seemed an is as large as Ireland, is entirely a emanation from some personal object volcanic production; it has been rais-hidden from view; and this glory ed from the bottom of the ocean; can we think it improbable, then, (to say nothing of Plato's testimony concerning a continent being swallowed up by the ocean,) that the sea may have inundated various parts of the earth, and that the higher lands, constituting the present islands, may have been peopled with inhabitants who escaped the inundation? "But in whatever way the islands of the South Sea may have become inhabited, the similarity, (I do not say the identity,) of the languages spoken in them all, leads us to believe that they have all one common origin; and the time, I conjecture, will come, when the mother language of all the various dialects spoken in these islands will be discovered in some parts of Asia. "There is another argument which, with me, has great weight in establishing the fact, that these inhabitants have had continental progenitors, and the argument is this, their drums, spears, bows, helmets; their nets, hooks, hatchets, most of their instruments, warlike and domestic, as well as many of their customs, civil, military, and religious, have a strong resemblance to what we read concerning the instruments and customs of other nations. I forbear to dilate on this subject, the mention of it will be sufficient to shew you its importance." which surrounded it was the cause of its being the imparter of its life, and constituted the principal orderer of its internal policy. I seemed instinetively to have gained the knowledge of the names and properties of every thing I beheld, and by this knowledge I understood that the atmosphere was called “ Providentia Dei." I also be held, floating in the midst of this air, a large black cloud which passed from one side to another, and darkened the spot over which, for the time being, it remained. This was the covering or hiding-place of a being called Satan; and there were also numberless other clouds of the same kind, but of lesser magnitude, many of which were the habitations of beings in every respect like the one just mentioned, whilst many more were formed by vapours which rose from the surface of the orb itself. Here I saw a man called Time, and having understood that he looked like an ancient sage, borne_down and worn away with years, I was surprised to see him, in appearance, a youth, who seemed in the full vigour of life, of health, and of strength; though it was true he had lived a great many ages; and this youth and vigour proceeded from no common cause. This being stood behind the ball which I beheld, and was engaged in urging it onward in its destined course, which work he performed by pushing it along in the same manner that we should impel a barrel in the way we wished it to go. In order to do thus, it was needful that he should touch the globe continually with his hand; and I observed that, wherever that hand fell, hoariness succeeded, and the part so touched assumed the appearance of age. Buildings were destroyed when his finger came in contact with them; temples and towers decreased before him, and fre 1 |