and all other calamities, and to have power not only to heal diseases of the body, but likewise those of the mind." Vaughan in his Life of Wicliffe, p. 86, gives a graphic account of the pecuniary uses to which relics were put by the priests in the days of that early reformer.

Lingard, the Romish historian, in the work already quoted, says: "The veneration of relics was diffused as far as the knowledge of the gospel; and their presence was universally deemed requisite for the canonical dedication of a church or an altar."-Anglo-Saxons, 2: 96.

But it may be thought by some that this superstitious use of relics to avert pestilence and other calamities, heal diseases, cast out devils and release souls in the pains of purgatory, was peculiar to past and dark ages, and no longer prevails. We therefore illustrate further the superstition as posted and practiced but a few years ago and even now at Rome.

Tablets are suspended over the high altar in the Church of St. John Lateran, one of the leading churches in Papal Christendom, that "indulgence plenary and daily" is granted to those who venerate the image of Christ in it. "Those who shall on their knees ascend devoutly the staircase called Holy, composed of twenty-eight steps, . . . shall acquire various indulgences in ascending each of the steps, as is read on the table here affixed."-Percy, pp. 32-6.

These are the steps that Luther was painfully and sorrowfully ascending when the Spirit sounded in his troubled soul the key note of the Reformation and of the gospel: "The just shall live by faith." In the church of St. Cosmo and Damian there hung at the same time this notice: "Leo XII. grants the indulgence of one hundred years and as many quarantines, to all those who shall devoutly visit the churches in which shall be exposed the holy relics; to be applied in suffrage of the dead."-Ibid. p. 52. Over the door of the Chapel, "Domine quo Vadis," was this inscription:

"Stop, O Traveller, and enter into this holy temple; for you will find there the foot-print and image of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he met with St. Peter, who was flying from prison. Alms are requested for wax and oil for the liberation of some soul from purgatory."-Percy, p. 57.

In St. Peters, in the Chapel of the Pietà, the following inscription is affixed to a spiral column :

"This is that column against which our Lord Jesus Christ leant while he preached to the people, and poured forth prayers to God in the temple, and stood leaning against it, with others standing round. From the temple of Solomon to the triumph of this Basilica here it was placed. It expels demons and liberates those vexed by unclean spirits, and performs many miracles daily."-Percy, p. 88.

A modernized form of this doctrine of relics and a modified use of them are worthy of notice in this connection.

"The practice still prevails extensively in Spain, of burying the dead clothed in the old cast off garments of the friars, as a means of securing for the soul a sure and certain admission into heaven.” . . For "the Virgin Mary appeared to one Simon Stock, a general of the Carmelite order, and promised him that no person should be eternally lost, who should die clothed in the short mantle worn by the Carmelites, and called the scapular. As the friars used thus to make a clear gain of from four to six dollars on each of their old garments, it is not strange that they strove to perpetuate the imposition."-Rockwell, i. 294.

This certainly is an improvement in the doctrine, since it allows the saint to dispose of some of his own relics and to his own advantage; while his bones will avail just as much for posterity and in purgatory after he has sold at rare profits the garments worn out on them.

We conclude this paper humbled and mortified by the exposition it makes of poor human nature, while we deeply mourn that our divine religion should be so soiled and burdened by human additions.

ARTICLE IV.

HINDRANCES TO CIVILIZATION:

OR, SOME DEFECTS IN OUR SOCIAL EDUCATION.

THIS life assumes no real dignity till we confess to our im mortality. Our future life ignored, this mortal one is but a preface without its volume, a portico richly wrought, but having adjoining and beyond only sky and cloud. If man live only in this world, then is he only a thinking animal, making instead of receiving his lair and clothing, less prudent in that he toils to lay by what shall never bless him or his, less happy in that he develops passions and longings ever to annoy, never to be satisfied.

And with all her studied and labored acquisitions his companion is less beautiful in form and hues than the flower, less graceful in motion than the swallow, less musical than the birds of song. Man's preeminence over beast, bird or flower, is not conceded without an argument, if his immortality be denied. Without a hereafter, his compound nature, the sensuous and the spiritual, is a vast mystery, and the creative outlay in the noble mechanism and sublime combination of the two, is but a significant index pointing to an approaching blank.

Admission of our immortality is the key that unlocks the otherwise mystery of life, discloses an object worthy that index, and reveals our dignity in revealing our destiny. This truth realized, our mortal life is a preface worthy the volume it heralds, a portico not too labored or costly for the temple of eternity to which it admits us.

That in man, then, which distinguishes him from the mere animal, allying him to God and marking him as immortal, is what claims his first and main thought as an object of development and culture.

The earthy and sensuous, as conjoined to him in his body and associated with him in the external world, should be made, not as primary and ultimate, but subsidiary and auxiliary, to the perfecting of his true worth and consummating of his high des

tiny. The physical should ever be regarded as the bond-servant of the spiritual, thoughts above things, ideas above dollars, an added science or language more than a new mortgage or mansion. And for the reason that the man proper is the integral, indivisible, thinking self, not the corporal person, or any material possessions, the accident of the moment. A man, strictly speaking, is a reasoning, emotional immortal, not a golden wedge of Ophir. His measure is the compass of his soul, not of his acres. So his prosperity is enlargement of mind and increase of mental treasure, not of his bank stock. And progress in him or society is not more catering to the appetite, more foreign fashions on the person, more gold and silver on the table, more servants around one's carriage, and more temptations and facilities for luxury, indolence and uselessness. Progress is rather the pushing of thought farther and farther along the line of the true, the pure, the beautiful. It is making the mental and moral Ultima Thule of our fathers the nursery and play ground of our children.

If these things be true, then have we before us the true aim and compass of civilization. It is the exaltation to supremacy of the mental and moral in man over the physical. It determines the value of all things worldly as they promote this process. It grades a man by his attainments in it, and promotion of it. It chronicles progress by the increase of noble, true thought and pure feeling. It marks that as our best society where the greatest minds and best hearts congregate, where ideas rare, abundant, elevating, are the feast and the dessert, and where a new book of a royal thinker is more thought of than a new bonnet of a court milliner.

We have thus prepared the way to pass certain strictures on our present systems of education. We use the term, systems of education, not as limited to any academic or professional course of study, but in a more extensive sense, as embracing those influences that mould and give character to society. The community is, so to speak, a monitorial school, in which all are both teachers and learners. We are taught by those above us, and transmit the teaching to those below. These social, educational influences, are wide in their scope, potent in their force, and some of the existing ones very sad in their fruits. Hence

the need, imperious, yet painful, to point them out with a warning hand.

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Briefly and gently let the task be tried,

To touch some frailties on their tender side."

-Astræa, p. 22.

The current of social influence is too earthy, too strong toward materialism. The relative position of the mind to the body is inverted. The sovereignty of the former is usurped by the latter, so that what should have been the menial has become the master.

Life, instead of being a means for an immortal, is used as an end for a mortal. The grand ultimatum, with vast numbers, seems to be, the luxuries of the table, the mad chase after pleasure, the extravagances of the wardrobe, the show and glare of equipage, the eclipsing brightness of display in society, elegant and luxurious indolence, or the ponderous, solid name of so many tens of thousands. In all which the intellectual, the moral and perpetual, are no aim, end, or coveted fruit. There is no hint in it that the mind is the man, and that he is an immortal. It is but a daintier morsel for an epicurean stomach, a gaudier plumage for the aristocratic peacock, a livelier frolic for the ape, a wider range for the lion, when he goes on change.

How foreign all such tendency and life from man's nature and evident destiny, as allied to the spiritual and divine. It is an utter perversion of things temporal. They are furnished as

They are stepping Our creator gives

means to elevate, not depress and enslave. stones, a stairway, to something higher. them as a ladder from above to aid us in rising, while we, childlike, play on its rounds till the deep evening of life. Burns has expressively called man a compound of dirt and deity." In the manner of life we have indicated how does the former preponderate!

er

Take the simplest manifestation of this frivolous life, pleasure-seeking. What multitudes are mad on mere enjoyment. Toil and denial for a portion of time are made auxiliary to it, money subsidiary; health, Christian virtues and manly excellences, are sacrificed to it, while mental acquisitions are put at a greater remove than secondary. In the more public display