good, so few are saying with the Psalmist David, "Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us?" The reason is, that in consequence of the Fall of man our affections have become debased, our will perverted, and our spiritual understanding enfeebled. "God is not in all our thoughts;" we "love darkness rather than light, because our deeds are evil." It is necessary therefore that the eyes of our understandings should be enlightened, and our nature renewed, in order that we may choose what is really good. We must become sensible of the sinfulness and misery of our condition, while living" without God in the world;" and we must feel our need of the pardon of our sins, and of the renewal of our hearts after his image. We must also become acquainted with his willingness and his power to make us real ly happy, and especially with that most exalted proof of his love to us, the gift of his own Son, as a sacrifice for our transgressions, and the promise of his Spirit to renew us in "righteousness and true holiness." We must also be so transformed in the spirit of our minds, that we may find our highest happiness in his favour; viewing him as a reconciled Father in Christ Jesus, holding communion with him in prayer and holy meditation, and making obedience to his laws our study and delight. The temptations to make the world our portion are ever at hand, and press upon us: they appeal to our senses and appetites; they present themselves according to our ages or circumstances in life, in the various forms of profit, pleasure, or worldly distinction, and exhibit innumerable allurements adapted to every taste. But spiritual and hea. venly enjoyments, those "good things which God has prepared for them that love him," need to be often reflected upon, and made familiar to the mind by a diligent perusal of the Scriptures, in order that their unspeakable value may be deeply and habitually felt. Even

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 302.

the true Christian himself, the man who has most firmly made the right choice in our text, is so frail and feeble by nature, and so constantly surrounded by the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, that he needs ever to call to mind the true wisdom of his choice, lest, in moments of weakness or despondency, he should be led to join the universal inquiry, "Who will shew us any good," instead of rejoicing, as it is his privilege to do, in the substantial good which he has already found; that infinitely valuable portion which the world can neither give nor take away. He should reflect upon the attributes of God; his wisdom to contrive, his love to bestow, his power to secure, the best happiness of those who trust in him. He should remember his covenant of mercy; and the blessings of pardon and reconciliation, of holiness and support, which flow from an interest in it, by means of a humble faith in Christ Jesus, the Mediator and Surety of that cove nant. And lastly, he should fix his mind with ardent faith upon that future inheritance which is reserved for him in heaven, and which, after all earthly good shall have passed away, shall endure for ever, eternal and unchangeable as that gracious Saviour who has gone before to take possession of mansions of heavenly glory in his behalf.

Let us then make the practical inquiry, To which class do we belong? to the many who seek their portion in this life; or to the few who set their affections upon things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God? Let us not follow a multitude, to the ruin of our souls; but strive to enter into that narrow way which leadeth to life everlasting. And, with regard to worldly good, let us in perfect confidence commit ourselves to the merciful providence of our heavenly Father, assured that, if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all other things which are really good for us shall be added unto us.

M

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

THE Correspondents who have stated in your pages the chief opinions and hypotheses respecting our Lord's alleged anticipation of the Passover, were probably not aware of another solution of the difficulty which has been lately offered to the public, in a sermon upon the subject by the Rev. J. Molesworth. That writer maintains the three following propositions —

I. That the term Passover is applied, not only to the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, but also to the whole feast of unleavened bread.

II. That the sacrifice, the eating, &c. of the Paschal Lamb, considered simply as connected with those events which then happened to the Jewish nation, had a reference, not only to the preservation of their first-born from the destroying angel, but also (and in a principal degree) to the deliverance of the whole nation from Egyptian captivity.

III. That the time of day fixed by commentators for the departure

of the Israelites from Egypt, is erroneously laid down: That instead of quitting the land of their captivity in the morning of the 15th Abib, or Nizan, they were marching out "between the two evenings," about the hour in which the Paschal Lamb was slain ;about the hour, and on the day of the month, when our Saviour exclaimed "It is finished;" when our deliverance from the captivity of sin and death was completed by our Redeemer on the cross, bowing his head," and "giving up the Ghost."

It would lead me into too long a discussion, to detail at present Mr. Molesworth's various arguments on the subject, which may be found at large in his pamphlet ; but the enunciation of his propositions seemed necessary to complete the view of opinions given by your former correspondents; and I should be happy if some of them, who have weighed Mr. Molesworth's arguments, would state the result of their investigation respecting them.

A. M.

UTILITY OF SPEECH TO THE DEAF".

By the December Number of your magazine, I perceive, that some person unknown to me has done me the honour of bringing forward some parts of a speech which I felt it my duty to make, at the last anniversary of the Irish National Deaf-and-Dumb Institution," in Dublin, in reply to all the objec

* We think it right to insert the following paper, though the writer is pleased in some parts to be a little severe upon ourselves. Our earnest wish is to promote the universal education of the deaf and dumb; and we shall be most happy if the discussion which has taken place in our pages shall have assisted in calling the attention of the public to the subject.

be urged, against that or similar schools; and in refutation of some visionary projects, as to the education of deaf mutes, which have of late years been promulgated. I send you herewith a copy of the last Report of that Institution, in which the whole of that speech, and some notes to it, are given in detail. As I conceive that the arguments and facts contained therein are, on most of the points to which I have alluded, conclusive; I shall not occupy your time by them, more than their perusal will require. My only business, at present, is with your own note, at the foot of your correspondent's communication (December, p. 756), to which

I have above alluded; in which you attack the teachers of deaf-anddumb schools in these kingdoms*.

• Our only "attack," if so it must be called, was a statement, that, chiefly by insisting upon the necessity of teaching deaf mutes to speak, the business is retained in "a very few hands." We lament again to assert, that, for whatever reasons, there has been in various instances an effort, on the part of the conductors of some of these institutions, to limit the facilities for acquiring and communicating the system, by onerous and unnecessary regulations. Will our correspondent justify, for example, the conduct of the institutions of London and Edinburgh, (the latter being itself restricted by the former,) towards Mr. Gallaudet, who wished to acquire the system in order to carry it to America, but was driven by the illiberal requisitions of these institutions to France, where he acquired it in a short period, and he is now most successfully using it in the "American Asylum" in Connecticut? (See Christian Observer for 1817, p. 822, and 1818 pp. 68, 132.) We gather also from the last Report of the Dublin Asylum, which Dr. Orpen has been so obliging as to send us, and which contains much interesting matter relative to the deaf and dumb, that an effort has been made to establish a day-school in Dublin for these unhappy persons, but that the plan has been strenuously opposed by the friends of the Claremont Asylum. The following is an extract from Dr. Orpen's own speech. It is omitted by the correspondent who furnished the extracts in the former paper. "We find by experience, that nothing interests persons so much about the deaf, as seeing them in every stage of instruction, and that almost every person who visits Claremont, becomes (or grows more) interested. Why do they go a mile or two to visit it? To see the curiosity of the education of the deaf. But if there were another school in the city, for the same purpose, persons would go there to see this curiosity, and not take the trouble to go so far as Claremont, and pay a turnpike beside. Thus, though a day-school in Dublin, if it succeeded, might benefit a few children, whom our funds do not yet permit us to receive into Claremont ; still, by diminishing visitors to it, and thus diminishing its support, or at least preventing its increase; it might injure more deafand-dumb persons, in the country parts of Ireland, who can have no refuge but our boarding-school."

The same Report informs us, that Mr. S. Gordon, who had been a teacher in the Claremont Asylum, and who was the proposer of this day-school, having published a statement that "a shameful attempt had been made to bind him not to assist in the

I am not a teacher of the deaf, though it pleased God, some ten years' since, to make me the instrument of founding the first institution for their relief, that ever existed in Ireland. I have been a voluntary servant of that institution, as secretary, since the day of its commencement; and never derived any emolument from the services that I have felt it my duty and my pleasure to render to the deaf and dumb. I had also some years since, while travelling on the continent, opportunities of visiting many of the principal deaf-anddumb institutions in Europe, and correspond officially with almost all those of Europe and America; and the committee and master of our institution, and myself, have collected into our library almost all the works that have ever been written on the subject of the education of deaf mutes: and moreover, during a season of ill health, when I was unable for a time to attend to the active exercise of my own profession (surgery), I amused myself by instructing a deaf-and-dumb child, prior to our institution's foundation, with a view to interest the public of Dublin in that project, by proving what could be done, even in a few months, by one who had no experience".

formation of any similar establishment in Ireland," Dr. Orpen in his speech stated, "that no such requirement ever was made by the managers at Claremont." It is added, that "during this speech. Dr. Orpen met with frequent interruptions from Mr. S. Gordon," but the counter-statement of Mr. Gordon, whatever it might be, is not given.

And yet the drift of Dr. Orpen's speech is to prove that deaf mutes can be properly educated only in asylums expressly for the purpose, where they must be boarded as well as instructed! The lamentable restriction which is thus thrown in the way of the general instruction of the deaf and dumb, may be inferred from the fact quoted by Dr. Orpen himself, that in the London deaf-and-dumb Asylum, the average annual expense of each of two hundred and twenty-two children is not less than thirty-seven, or thirtyeight pounds, exclusively of clothes, which are provided by their friends. Such a

Therefore, I trust, I may say, that I am an unprejudiced and disinterested witness, and a competent judge; and more especially in the question of teaching articulation to the dumb; because, at the above time, I myself taught several to speak without any difficulty, though I never had been instructed in the mode; and because, in the Institution at Dublin, under my friend Mr. Humphreys, articulation is never made an indispensable part of their education.

I shall not stop to notice your "thinking, that many of the arguments" in the extracts from my speech, made by your correspondent, are "open to refutation," further than by saying, that I have now furnished you with the whole, and that I request you publicly to disprove, if you can, both the facts and the inferences which I have therein combined, and by which many persons have felt convinced that I have overthrown all the arguments and theories of Mr. Arrowsmith, the Quarterly Reviewers, and "the papers in your own former volumes."

"Our own great objection," says your note, "to the management of the Deaf-and-Dumb Institutions, in this country, is, that their conductors profess to teach deaf mutes to speak." If this be an insinuationt that they

do not accomplish what they profess, any one who will take the trouble of going to the London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, or Dublin Institutions, or to most of the private schools in England, will not only find that many of the senior pupils can speak so distinctly that a stranger can, at the first audience, understand what they say, but that the most advanced can, in many instances, tell what the visitor says, by watching the motions of his mouth. This I have seen, over and over again. But that you are not so competent as some others to lead the public mind, on this question, is more manifest from your thinking, that it is "in this country" alone*, that the dumb are taught to speak. If you will inquire, or collect the Reports and publications of the continental schools, you will find that, in almost every one, some of the pupils are instructed in articulation; and that, in the larger number, all are so instructed. And, that you may the

even the best instructed of those deaf mutes who are annually exhibited at the City-of-London Tavern, and who, we conclude, are the greatest proficients in articulation. The uncouth, unnatural, and often unintelligible sounds to which they give utterance, convey pain rather than gratification to others.

We did not either say or "think that "it is in this country alone" that the dumb are taught (or rather, we should say, attempted to be taught) to speak. All that we said was, that reading, writing, and all other necessary instruction can be given to deaf mutes without attempting to make them articulate; in proof of which we referred to "the example of the institutions in France and America," where instruction is thus given. We did not say that there were no institutions in which articulation is attempted; or that, even in some where it is not general, it may not be attempted in particular cases.

If only a part are not thus instructed, it is quite sufficient to prove all that our argument embraced; namely, that articulation is not indispensable in order "to give a deaf mute a language." Dr. Orpen will probably reply, that no argument was necessary to prove so obvious a truth; but, obvious as it is, it has been either ignorantly or intentionally kept out of sight by some of the advocates for articulation.

more readily make the inquiry, I furnish you with the following catalogue of some of the principal ones: -Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Pisa, Genoa, Naples, Florence, Yverdun, Munich, Vienna, Waitzen, Prague, Berlin, Kiel, Linz, Leipsic, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Hamburgh, Petersburg, Wilna, Bordeaux, Paris, and many other minor ones, of which I do not at present happen to have the list near me*. You are also mistaken, in thinking that all the American institutions disuse articulation. Only those do so which have originated from the Connecticut Asylum at Hartford, of which the head master, the Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, was taught at Paris, and the assistant master, Clerc, was Sicard's most celebrated pupil, next to Massieu. But few of Sicard's pupils were taught to speak; yet if you look into his works and those of his former assistant, Bebian, you will find, that he expresses, in the strongest terms, his wish, that he had a sufficient number of assistants to enable him to teach articulation to all. Almost all of De L'Epée's pupils were taught articulation; as you may see by his works, which have been translated into English.

The public will perhaps agree with me, in thinking the united opinions of so many men of practical experience more than a counterbalance for your assertion, that this

They speak of the insufficiency of "the language of signs" to convey moral or religious truth; but the controversy is not between manual signs and written or printed language, but only between manual signs and oral language. Writing and reading are common to both systems; and these, added to signs, we still contend, are sufficient for all desirable purposes; and we are persuaded they may be taught to deaf mutes without that formidable degree of skill and labour which the public have been led to think necessary, and which would deter most persons from undertaking the task, even for a relative.

This list proves nothing; for Dr. Orpen does not inform us which of these institutions adopt, and adopt exclusively, system of teaching articulation.

the

part of their mode of instruction is a “mummery*.”

Now, as to your assertion, that it is by this "mummery, of teaching deaf mutes to speak, that the conductors of the British institutions retain the education of them in a very few hands," I answer, that the very simplest of all the parts of the education of the deaf and dumb, and that which requires the least talents, and the least time, and the least attention, is articulation; and I would undertake, in half an hour, or in three pages of your magazine, to make any person, of ordinary intellect and education, understand the mode of teaching it so perfectly, that he could enable any deaf child in his neighbourhood to speak distinctly in three or four weeks at the farthest. That the masters of the institutions, in these kingdoms, have not made a mystery of their mode of teaching to speak, is evident; for in the work published in 1809, on "The Instruction of the Deaf," by Dr. Watson, master of the "London Asylum," the whole process is so fully explained, that the mere perusal of it, without ever having seen a deaf-and-dumb school, or, until then, a deaf-and-dumb person, enabled me, in 1815, to teach a dumb boy to speak exceedingly well in a few weeks, though I did it merely as an amusement, and for the purpose mentioned before. Any other person could do the same; and each

* We believe that the results of " 'practical experience" are on our side. The Quarterly Reviewers, and others who have taken up the same view of the subject with ourselves, have at least less of prepossession and personal feeling to encounter than those whose occupation, and a very lucra tive one in some instances, would be endangered by simplifying the system, cutting down the expense, and multiplying the number of teachers. With regard to the word "mummery," we regret that we should have used an offensive term; though our meaning was not beyond what we believed to be the truth.

+ Where then the need for the enormous expenses of the London Asylum; the receipts of which, for 1825, were upwards of