most peculiarly fit. Diversified modes of industry, and the interchange of the products of those modes, would consequently be contemporaneous in their origin: and the disputes that would necessarily arise, even in such an imperfect form of social existence, respecting the accumulation and the distribution of wealth, would, along with other causes, evince the propriety of some authority constituted by the general voice, for the determination of all controversies, whatever their source might be. So that war, which originated in the spirit of disunion, was thus converted by a benignant Providence into an element of concord; developing sympathy, softening rudeness, and awakening in the heart the first traces of moral elevation.

But war did more than this; war peopled the world. If man had remained in his simple agricultural state, population would never have extended with any rapidity. The peasants and the shepherds would have clung as long as they could cling to the home of their fathers, both from traditional attachment and from the indolence of their habits. But when hostile tribes carried their contentions to the last extremities, and when one vanquished the other, the one that was conquered was compelled either to submit to the dominion of the conqueror, or to desert its native scenes, and flee to some new spot, where no mortal had yet pierced, and where it could dwell in peace. This was the alternative generally adopted; and thus, by successive expulsions, was earth covered with its countless myriads.

Then, again, war gives the most picturesque and pathetic aspects to the poetry of the past. The history of all nations is made interesting chiefly by their warlike exploits. And though, in reading an account of those exploits, we have often to weep for the folly, the madness, the cruelty of our fellow-creatures, yet our imagination fastens not permanently on such harsh and painful features, but selects what may best harmonise with its habitual musings with its dreams of freedom, and of the manly assertion, even unto blood, of a divine idea. And what more energetically than this poetry of war, has been the inspirer of artistical genius? The painter and the sculptor have found some of their most inspiring

scenes where the gore of thousands had gushed; and the truest artist of all-the poet-has oftenest gathered his laurels where the warrior had gathered his. War derives its suggestiveness for every mind, and especially for the poet's mind, from the variety of objects that it presents; but also, in no ordinary measure, from the contrasts that accompany that variety. As in nature, the smile of summer is made sweeter by the frowns of winter, the calm of ocean more delightfully placid by the tempest that has preceded it,—the sunny sky more gorgeously attractive by the previous presence of the giants of the storm, of whose combat it has been the theatre;- -so it is in life. Affection, in all its countless and beautiful forms,-home, with its harvest of ever outgushing gladness, all social relations,-all industrial employments, derive their dearest charm from the possibility of interruption, from the thought that loss, and separation, and death, may traverse what is so cherished and so fair. And this is what makes war a source of limitless inspiration for the poet's soul.

And do not doubt, also, that war has had an immense effect in encouraging the love of freedom, and in promoting the feeling of manliness and the consciousness of strength. And if tyrants have generally used this lovethis feeling this consciousness-for their own bad and selfish ends, yet they will ultimately be employed for the destruction of all tyrannies; and then war, as an actuality, shall for ever pass away, and its good influences alone will survive-influences which I have been able but imperfectly to delineate.

Many of the remarks that I have applied to war, are applicable to the Hero. He is the earliest and least refined form of the agents of civilization; but still not less an agent meriting our study, and in some degree our reverence. Tribes, when they took something like a social organization, probably chose their governors from the old, and less from a regard to any peculiar qualities that they possessed, as on account of their patriarchal standing: and the duties of government were so few, and the temptations to despotism so rare, that there could scarcely be any misuse of this delegated authority. But not thus would they choose their military leader. He

that had proved his powers by a contest with peril in all its diversified forms; he whose heart had a crushless daring, and whose limbs had an iron strength; he who was now found slaughtering the monsters of the forest that desolated the shepherds' flocks-now mingling in the hottest of the fight, the foremost and the most undaunted -now breasting the foaming, furious waves of the river or the lake-now roaming, as a hunter or as a foeman, amid rugged peaks mantled with eternal snow: he would be selected, by the unanimous voice of his admiring tribe, to be thenceforth their conductor and inspirer in the storm of battle. There was here a great fact—the recognition of a great right-the fact of strength: the only strength then known, obtaining its legitimate influence, and the right of freemen freely to testify submission to their strongest and their best. We talk somewhat loosely and disparagingly about barbarism; but I wish we had this remnant of barbarism back. Earth would be happier, and happier would be the rulers of earth.

The Hero had an immediate influence as a civilizer of his race, and he had an influence more remote. His immediate influence was chiefly felt in the creation of patriotic sentiment and patriotic courage. The mere circumstance of residence in a certain locality could never have created patriotism. It might have created a vague, passive affection for objects which from childhood had been familiar. But such a locality needed something notable, to which memory could cling, in order to make it a source of patriotic attachment. And the first notabilities that arose, and could be moulded into recollections, were the hero's deeds. The glory that those deeds shed, made the native soil more dear; and then, by a reflex tendency, the love of the native soil made the glory more radiant. And whatever a perverted nationality may have since become, yet the first appearance of nationality was an immense step in human progress; for it raised the aim and scope of man's sympathies beyond the family circle, to the interests and undertakings of the tribe. No very elevated conception might thus be communicated; but narrow and exclusive selfishness received a fatal blow: and the destruction of selfishness in any of its phases is a march towards a brighter and a better.

Grander

The more remote influence of the Hero was a religious influence. The reverence that flowed round the Hero's actions and the Hero's memory, insensibly yielded to the persuasion that regarded him as a divinity. As time flowed on, the magnitude of his actions would be aggrandised in the praises of his countrymen. Something supernatural, something beyond and above the strength of man, would be attributed to his energies. than man, stronger than man, what then could he be? By an easy belief of their untutored fancy-a visitor from some region unknown, perhaps a wanderer from some starry palace in the skies. And since, as they had come to imagine through the augmenting traditions of ages, he had performed feats so miraculous-feats so utterly removed from the grasp of human capability-what readier supposition than to couclude, that he was the creator of those agencies of nature whose operations they daily witnessed? To testify their veneration for him alike as a Hero and as a god, they coarsely carved some image of wood or stone, and brought to the ungraceful idol their choicest offerings, under the natural impression that it was filled with the presence of him whom they adored. This was their religion-simple and sensuous-but yet proceeding from a noble motive. They had no conception of the spiritual in man; they could not therefore have any conception of the spiritual in Deity: nor could they have any conception of the Deity at all beyond his manifestation in some material form. And if we consider that Providence designed to conduct our species gradually by means of material emblems up to the plenitude of spiritual truth, perhaps religion could not have had a more beautiful commencement. It was the outburst of gratitude, though it might afterwards degenerate into the gloom of fear. And now that, in a more advanced age, we are able to see the good that lurks in much apparent evil, and the evil that lurks in much apparent good, we turn towards this consecration of the first temple to the infinite Father, by means of hero-worship, as to one of the loveliest incidents in the history of mankind.

In the past of the world, we are chiefly occupied with facts; in the future of the world, we are chiefly occupied with ideas. And so is it with our own individual exist

ence. Our memory brings before us the notable circumstances of our life; our hope brings before us the possible realization of some sublime idea, into which we have poured the entire substance of our philosophy. The future, then, must always be a grander thing, both for the world and for individuals, inasmuch as ideas are greater than facts. But whenever we wander into the past-whenever we ponder on the region of facts-let us honour the Hero, and let us see the significance of hero-worship. And as the Hero was the embodiment of God's strength, and was revered as the strong, let us learn this lesson among others, that though heroes and hero-worship may perish, yet that God, the strong, never fails to raise up strengths to work the needed work of human salvation.

ON THE ORIGIN OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

"AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM."

To the Editor of the Christian Pioneer.

SIR, The establishment of Sunday Schools forms a remarkable era in the annals of our country, inasmuch as we are enabled to trace from the period of their introduction a decided and progressive improvement in the character and conduct of the mass of the people, especially in those districts where all the advantages pertaining to that admirable institution have been fully developed and extensively called into action.

It has long been the prevailing opinion, that we were indebted to Mr. Raikes, of Gloucester, for the idea of Sunday School instruction, and that he, in fact, was the Founder of the system. This, until recently, was my own decided conviction; but having introduced his name, as such, in an article on Mr. Hill's Postage plan, which appeared in the Midland Counties Herald of the 8th of April last, a clergyman of Gloucester, far advanced in years, stepped forward in the next week's paper to dispute the point, and to put in a claim in behalf of his deceased tutor and fellow-citizen, the Rev. Thomas Stock.

The statement thus put forth in that most respectable