ature by progressive steps, has
been tried with undeviating success for many years. Its efficiency, as
embracing the principle employed by Nature for the communication of
knowledge, has been repeatedly subjected to the most delicate and at the
same time the most searching experiments. By its means, in connection of
course with the catechetical exercise by which it is wrought, very
extraordinary effects have been produced even upon individuals whose
minds and circumstances were greatly below the average of common
children.

In the experiment made upon the adult criminals in the County Jail of
Edinburgh, the pupils acquired easily and permanently a thorough
knowledge of the history contained in the Book of Genesis. "They gave a
distinct account of its prominent facts, from Adam, down to the
settlement in Goshen, and shewed by their answers, that these
circumstances were understood by them, in their proper nature and
bearings. They gave, in the next place, a connected view of the leading
doctrines of revelation; when their answers evinced, most
satisfactorily, that they apprehended, not merely each separate truth,
but that they perceived its relation to others, and possessed a
considerable knowledge of the divine system as a whole. They were also
examined upon several sections of the New Testament; where their answers
displayed an equally clear and accurate knowledge of the subject." These
persons, be it observed, belonged to a class of individuals, who are
generally considered to be peculiarly hostile to the reception of
information of this kind, and certainly who are least able to comprehend
and retain it; and all this, besides other portions of knowledge, on
which they were examined during the experiment, was communicated with
ease by about twenty hours teaching.

By the experiment made at Aberdeen, upon children the most ignorant that
the Committee of Clergymen could find among the several schools in the
city, it was ascertained, that after only nine or ten hours teaching,
they had not only received a thorough knowledge of "several sections of
New Testament History," but that they had acquired a knowledge of all
the leading events included in the Old Testament History, from "the
death of Moses, downwards to that of the revolt of the Ten Tribes in the
reign of Rehoboam. Here they distinctly stated and described all the
leading circumstances of the narrative comprised in the 'First Step,'
whose brief but comprehensive