knowledged master who was long since dead. Such words would doubtless have far more weight with an unreasoning despot than the strongest argument of a contemporary whom he regarded as only a football for his own capricious humor."

The hopes excited by the confident announcement of an ancient Babylonian literature surviving in extensive specimens, have ended in disappointment. The light is extinguished, which for a moment seemed to flicker over the desolations of Babylon. The darkness of remote antiquity settles down again on the doomed city, whose prosperity and pride are attested, and whose utter ruin is predicted, by the ancient Hebrew prophets. Whatever accessions may hereafter be made to our knowledge of it, must be made, it should seem, from the careful study of its ruins, as well as the ruins of other great cities in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. The monuments of Nineveh and Babylon are covered with the arrowheads and wedges of a strange and complicated system of writing. A beginning has been made in the work of deciphering these characters; and though the results thus far obtained by Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert, and others, have not been such as to command the unquestioning assent of scholars, we have yet ground to hope that investigation here will pass beyond the region of conjectures and tentatives, and will arrive at positive and reliable conclusions. But it is certain that the Nabathæan literature will furnish little or no material for illustrating the times of Babylonian greatness. The immense importance which would belong to it, if genuine, vanishes of course with the recognition of its spuriousness. Yet it is very far from being unimportant, and scholars will await with much interest its promised publication. It will present, as in a vast repository, the science, and especially the natural science, possessed by the eastern world a thousand years ago. And, what is perhaps yet more important, it will show the unscientific, or anti-scientific, elements of eastern thought, in the period of its composition; the ignorance and error which prevailed in reference to the history of past times; the monstrous, yet prosaic, inventions of legendary fiction; the superstitious beliefs and the scarcely less superstitious skepticism; the affectation of

superhuman wisdom and the pretension to a magical power over nature. At all events, it will be recognized as the most prodigious specimen the world has yet seen of literary imposture. Immense in extent, multifarious in contents, it represents the labor of a life-time, and embodies the learning of an age. After continuing for ten centuries to impose upon the Eastern world, it has found able and strenuous advocates in the West, and has not been unmasked without much expenditure of critical ingenuity and scholarly research.

ARTICLE IX.-CHURCH-GOING.

EVERY now and then somebody gives us the church-going statistics, from which it appears that the people do not go universally, not even extensively. Indeed, it is not unfrequently remarked: "People don't go to church as much as they used to."

How do you account for it? we asked of a friend who made this remark, not many days ago.

“Oh, they are carried elsewhere by the isms of the day,— Adventism, Mormonism, Spiritualism, and every other new thing."

But delusions are not peculiar to our day; they have always existed, in every age. Do you mean to pronounce the people more foolish now than they have been in any former age?

"Well, no, probably not. I rather think there was more talent in the pulpit, in former days, than there is now."

If by talent you mean learning, and skill to use it, in accordance with the canons of logic and rhetoric taught in our schools of learning, we can't agree with you. The evidence all points the other way. Our schools, colleges, and seminaries have unquestionably made long strides in advance of the attainments of former days. The scholarship of the men of mark was on the whole never so comprehensive, nor so accurate, as now. So far, then, as scholarship has to do with filling our churches, the argument is in favor of our cotemporaries. And yet the fact is hardly to be questioned, the people take less interest in church-going than formerly. Can there be any doubt that church services are a boon to man? or that they stand closely related to his best intellectual, moral, and spiritual condition? Surely not. Is the tendency of the age downward? We think not. Certainly the history of the past fifty years is a history of unparalleled progress. And no doubt the church attendance is numerically greater now than at any former time; and yet, it may be true, and probably is true, that

the interest in preaching is not commensurate with the increase of interest in other departments of thought and instruction. Here is surely an evil, and

"For every evil under the sun,

There is a cure, or there is none;

If there be one, find it;

If there be none, don't mind it."

If absence from church, or infrequent and uninterested attendance on church, be an evil, there is a remedy, and it is worth while to find it. If it be true, as is very often affirmed, that the loss of reverence is so general with us as to have become a national characteristic; that reverence for office, for wisdom; for years, for man, and even for God, has sadly decreased among us, then it is plain that every philanthropist should, to the utmost of his ability, encourage the public reverence and worship of God; the obligation is recognized in churches of every name. Moreover, if the instruction given in our churches is fitted to the current necessities of our day, then most certainly it is an evil, and a great evil, that, on any pretext, the people fail to receive it. But, it is said, by both clergy and laity, less deference is given to the instructions of the pulpit than formerly. What then? Are the clergy prepared to abandon the ground? Has a decree of destiny gone forth against them?

"No, but the people have lost their interest in religious truth. They are less patient of any demands upon their close attention and serious thought than formerly.'

It is true that the people are less tolerant of indirection than formerly. Their necessities have constrained them so to be. But it may well be doubted if the best books ever had more readers, the best teachers in every department of science ever had more attentive listeners, than now. If, then, the pulpit has less power to affect the public than formerly, it seems-inevitable to conclude that somewhere there is a fault, or an oversight, that should be discovered and remedied. It is surely derogatory to no man, to no class of men, to inquire after errors. "Who can understand his errors?" is a very ancient exclamation; and as timely to-day as when first uttered. It

wells up like a natural spring out of the depths of conscious imperfection out of the consciousness of the man who is su premely solicitous to be a perfect man. It owns that the best intentioned man may be misled; that he may be warped by unnoticed influences, by agencies which he sees no reason to distrust, which have the almost inviolable sanction of long usage and of tradition from some of the best of men. Such tradition and usage have sometimes made it heresy even to glance at elements of influence freely placed at our disposal.

Fully recognizing that our religious teachers, as a body, are right-minded, intelligent, conscientious, and intent on benefiting their fellow-men, we propose to show that the ordinary hindrances to the accomplishment of their desire are much increased by the net-work of circumstances in which they are successively enclosed.

One of their most serious impediments to the largest influence arises from an exaggerated estimate of the worth of unusual knowledge. How far will a bright boy get on in the Latin grammar, think you, before he will begin to thank God that he is not as other boys, or even as these high-school boys, at the other end of the building? Thenceforth, the summit of human greatness, and of human excellence, in his view, is eminence in some department of science which will distinguish and separate him from—not unite him to-his fellow-men. And yet, Latin grammar, thoroughly studied, offers a preparation for usefulness in any department of life, the worth of which it would hardly be possible to exaggerate. If the boy is made to understand that the exact analysis of a dead language is of great value in giving him the most perfect freedom and mastery of his own living language, and that the command of this latter is the condition of deepest sympathy and largest influence with his fellow-men, and especially of the largest ability to do them good, then will he have an antidote to that poison of vanity and pedantry which is so often imbibed in the very milk of a liberal education.

There are evils incident to every profession in life, and one of the evils incident to that of the professional educator is, that eminent excellence in his own particular science is for him the