house of God, than an Anthony, a Benedict, an Arseneus, or a Paul. Nor
has the Almighty limited his gifts, or confined the mode of instruction
to those primitive times when the blood of the Mediator was as yet warm
upon the earth, and the believers in him filled more abundantly with the
first-fruits of the Spirit. No; he has extended his grace to every age!
Only take up the history of those holy persons, men and women, whose
lives shed a lustre upon the Church within these last few centuries, and
you will acknowledge that the arm of the Lord is not shortened, and, to
use the words of the Psalmist, that "_Sanctity becometh the house of the
Lord unto length of days,_" or to the end of time.

As therefore it hath pleased God to raise up for our help and
edification so many and so perfect models of Christian perfection, and
disposed by his all wise providence that their lives should have been
written for our instruction, we should not be faithful co-operators with
the grace given to us, if we did not use our best efforts to learn and
to imitate what our Father in heaven has designed for our use.

But "The Lives of the Saints" are a history, not so much of men, as of
all ages and nations,--of their manners, customs, laws, usages, and
creeds. And in this licentious age, an age of corrupted literature, when
that worldly wisdom or vain philosophy which God has declared to be
folly, is again revived; in this age, when history has failed to
represent the truth, and is only written for base lucre's sake, or to
serve a sect or party, what can be so desirable to a Christian
community, as to have placed in their hands a sincere and dispassionate
account of the nations which surround us, and of the laws and manners
and usages, whether civil or religious, which have passed, or are
passing into the abyss of time? If the wisdom of God warns us "to train
up youth in the way in which they should walk," and promises that "even
when old they will not depart from it," there is no duty more sacred, or
more imperative or parents and pastors, than to remove from their reach
such {012} books as are irreligious, immoral, or untrue, and to place in
their hands such works only as may serve to train their minds and
affections to the knowledge of truth and to the love of virtue.

History is, of its nature, pleasing and instructive; it leaves after it
the most lasting impressions; and when youth, as at present, is almost
universally taught to read, a