ced an
appropriate lesson, calculated to guide their conduct, when placed in a
like, or analogous situation. It is within the truth to allege, that in
this part of their examination, they submitted upwards of fifty palpable
lessons, that cannot fail, we would conceive, hereafter to have a
powerful influence upon their affections and deportment."

In the experiments both in Newry and London, the children were found
quite adequate to the exercise; and in the latter instance, three
children, who at their first lesson did not know they had a soul, were
able to perceive and to draw lessons from almost any moral truth or fact
presented to them. This they did repeatedly when publicly examined by
the Committee of the London Sunday School Union, in presence of a large
body of clergymen, and a numerous congregation in the Poultry Chapel.
But we shall at present direct attention more particularly to the
children selected from the several schools in Aberdeen, as given in the
Report by Principal Jack, and the Professors and Clergymen in that
place. After mentioning, that these children, so very ignorant only
eight days before, had acquired a thorough acquaintance with the
leading facts in Old Testament History, they say, "From the various
incidents in the Sacred Record, with which they had thus been brought so
closely into contact, they drew, as they proceeded, a variety of
practical lessons, evincing, that they clearly perceived, not only the
nature and qualities of the actions, whether good or evil, of the
persons there set before them, but the use that ought to be made of such
descriptions of character, as examples or warnings, intended for
application to the ordinary business of life.

"They were next examined, in the same way, on several sections of the
New Testament, from which they had also learned to point out the
practical lessons, so important and necessary for the regulation of the
heart and life. The Meeting, as well as this Committee, were surprised
at the minute and accurate acquaintance which they displayed with the
multiplicity of objects presented to them,--at the great extent of the
record over which they had travelled,--and at the facility with which
they seemed to draw useful lessons from almost every occurrence
mentioned in the passages which they had read."

They were able also to apply this same principle,--the practical
application of useful knowledge,--to the perusal of civil history, and
also biography.