became standard works among Churchmenauthorities in point of doctrine-and popular manuals of devotion; so that it is not easy to calculate how extended has been their influence

-how great the debt the Church owes to these humble labors. The demand for them, however, may furnish some criterion; the copy of the Companion,' from which the above extract is taken, bears the impress, Sixth Edition; Stereotyped.'

Mr. Hobart was a great admirer of the good old form of catechetical instruction; he not only retained it, therefore, in the 'Festivals and Fasts,' but greatly extended its use in the Church, by his subsequent various enlargements of the Church Catechism broken into short questions.

He was a great friend, too, to the oldfashioned mode of catechizing in church, and thought it as greatly undervalued, as its more popular substitutes were overvalued. One cause of this disparagement of catechizing, he considered to arise from the hurried, and perhaps heartless manner in which it was generally performed. It was a duty which demanded and deserved, as he thought, the very best energies of the pastor. On this point he was much of Bishop Jebb's opinion; 'A boy may preach, but to catechize, requires a man.'

Now in this estimate, he certainly was in accordance with the purest ages of the Church. 'The most useful of all preaching,' says Bishop Hall, is catechetical; this being the ground, the other raiseth the walls and roofe.' 'Contemn it not, then, my brethren,' said that good old Bishop, for its easie and noted homelinesse; the most excellent and most beneficial things are ever most familiar.'

And what, we would ask, has been the result of its general neglect?

'Much,' says Archdeacon Bayley,' of that ignorant impatience of discipline, that ever learning, and never being able to come to the knowledge of the truth; that heartless indifference which usurps the name of liberality; and that licentiousness of self-will, which marks the latter days, as it disgraced the worst period, perhaps, of our annals,-much of all this, as well as of viciousness of life, and of error in religion, is owing to ungroundedness on the points of the Catechism.'*

The religious education of the young is certainly one of the great and good features of the present day, and the pastor who should neglect that portion of his flock, as they once were

* Charge, &c. See notes to Bishop Doane's 'Missionary Bishop.'

neglected, would certainly be regarded, even by the most unthinking, as forgetful of one of his most important duties. But, agreeing with all in the principle, Mr. Hobart differed with most, as to the means. In his choice of these he was far from swimming with the popular current. "The spirit of the age' (to give it its great name) was for giving to children knowledge, he was for giving them wisdom. Others were for filling their memories with facts, and exciting their minds by novelty; he for strengthening them, by instilling right principles of action, and moulding them by the Scripture rule of 'line upon line, and precept upon precept.' The Church was not to be in the place, to the young, of a school, or a college, but in that of a parent, whose maternal care was to be shown by bringing them up in that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation;' attaching them, by the power of early habit, to her doctrines, her discipline, and her worship; making them, not theologians, but Christians, and not Christians in a vague and general sense, but Christians in the Church; that is, recognising in what it teaches, the doctrines of the Gospel-in the sacraments it administers, the covenanted means of grace-in its ministry, a divine commission from CHRIST and his Apos

tles-and in its services a rational and heartfelt worship offered unto ALMIGHTY GOD.

Upon this principle Mr. Hobart wrote, taught, and acted; and although then, and perhaps now, in the minority upon the question, there is yet great and increasing reason to think him right. As an intellectual question, it is, undoubtedly, a wiser course to treat the minds of children as instruments of thought that are to be disciplined, rather than as storehouses of knowledge that are to be filled; and, as a religious question, there can be still less doubt, that it is the WILL rather than the INTELLECT that is to be addressed, in forming the Christian character.

Indeed there is too much reason to believe that the Christian world is already deeply suffering under the results of the opposite course, and that the wild excesses by which some parts of the Protestant Church are now desolated, have been but the natural result of a misdirected Christian education. From Sunday Schools not wisely governed, have come forth spiritual pride and an heretical contempt of authority, as well as Christian zeal and knowledge; the fruits produced on that tender soil depending not merely on good seed being sown, but on rooting out likewise the tares which an enemy hath planted.

The Companion to the Book of Common Prayer,' published also in 1805, may be regarded as the sequel to the Catechism-its aim being not only to instruct the young, but to awaken all to a perception of the propriety, the beauty, and the spiritual meaning of the Liturgy of the Church. It has long been stereotyped and widely circulated, and doubtless been the source of much good.

In 1806 Mr. Hobart put forth the last work in this series, 'The Clergyman's Companion.' In this it is to be regretted that he confined himself to mere compilation. The need of some such practical guide to the clergy is evident from the extensive and permanent demand that exists for this volume even in its present form. An original work, stamped by his self-devotion and sound judgment, would have been, to younger ministers at least, an invaluable aid— for certainly no class of men in society stand so much in need of a guiding and helping handnone are so ignorant of the world-none so inexperienced in the workings of human nature, -and yet, none are so frequently called upon both to counsel and direct ;-none, again, are so dependent for usefulness upon the opinions of others, and yet none are so frequently, or rather continually, placed in situations where the opinions and prejudices of others are to be

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