the sexes is the appointment of a board of women to visit all places of detention where female prisoners are confined, that their wants may be known, and any existing abuses be remedied. In the State of Rhode Island such a board has been in existence for the last three years, with excellent results. It is to the credit of New England that she has taken the initiative in these humane measures.

The subject of juvenile reformatories, and their mode of treatment of the third class of our criminal population, is too important to be hastily considered, and deserves a separate and more elaborate consideration than I am able to give to it, at the end of the present long-perhaps too long-paper. These institutions and their inmates present the most hopeful aspects of the question I have endeavored to discuss. If our Christian civilization and philanthropy can reach these and work upon them effectually for their elevation and improvement, the finest effects can be produced. We may not hope to save all the members of these neglected and unfortunate classes of our social life. But we are justified in believing that a large proportion of them will be saved. From the time that Falk and Young and Wichern and De Metz were moved to labor for the redemption of young delinquents and vagrants, until the present time, a vast deal of work has been performed, with most encouraging fruits. In the German reformatories, the relapses into vice are estimated as only about 5 per cent. At Mettrai, it is claimed that even a less proportion are lost. In Great Britain the proportion is greater-about 10 per cent. In the United States the proportion varies, according to the systems adopted, from 5 to 12 per cent. It is certainly encouraging to every humane heart to feel that so powerful and beneficial an agency is at work among these children of neglect, misfortune, or vice. Society may well rejoice that here it has a hold upon the criminal class, which will be effectual in checking the progress of crime. In the reform schools in the United States, the average number of inmates was, in 1870, not far from 7,500. The whole number of inmates from the establishment of these institutions among us to the present time is about 70,000. Of these, it is safe to say, at least 65,000 have been led into the way of a useful and honest life. The two systems of discipline, the fam

ily, modeled after the institution at Mettrai, and the congregate, have each their advocates. Of the former, the Farm School at Lancaster, Ohio, the House of Refuge at Plainfield, Indiana, and, in some respects, the Girls' Industrial School at Lancaster, Massachusetts, are conspicuous examples, both for character and results. The subject is manifestly too large for the space at present at my disposal, and I must, with other points, leave it for a more favorable opportunity.

I would add a single word in regard to providing employment for discharged prisoners. There is a certain stigma attaching to a person who has come from the reform school or the State prison which is difficult of removal, and the feeling against associating with such an one in the workshop is sometimes very strong. If an employer is willing, the fellow-workmen are often very reluctant to receive him. The man is thus thrust back into crime from his inability to enter upon a path of honest industry. It must be admitted, that the desire of the discharged prisoner is, upon its face, evidence that he is anxious to complete the work of reformation, and he should be encouraged to go on. General Pillsbury, the veteran Superintendent of the Albany Penitentiary, says: "After an experience and observation extended over more than forty-five years in prison life, of which twenty-five have been spent in superintendence of the Albany Penitentiary, I feel it my duty to put on record my sincere belief, that the best possible mode of protecting the public against the relapse of discharged convicts into crime is to furnish them with immediate employment, until they can become established in some respectable business." Many interesting facts are given in English reports, which go to confirm General Pillsbury's opinion, and furnish testimony to the good conduct of a large majority of those discharged prisoners who have sought and obtained ready employment. In a well-ordered prison, habits of industry are easily formed, and if the prisoner goes out with a recommendation from his officers of good conduct and good intentions, ready employment will help him wonderfully on the road to a better life.

*Report for 1870.

The subject, though imperfectly treated, is certainly very important. Every citizen is directly interested in making our prison system effectual, not for punishment only, but also for the higher end of the reformation of the prisoner. The results thus far wrought are encouraging. The recent Prison Congress in London had a hopeful outlook, and we are almost impatiently awaiting the publication of its "Transactions." The prospect of the future is bright. Certainly the end at which we are aiming is in line with the highest welfare of mankind. "Brethren, if any do err from the truth and one convert him, let him know that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins."

ARTICLE V. BUSHNELL'S SERMONS ON LIVING

SUBJECTS.

Sermons on Living Subjects. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.

A NEW Volume from Dr. Bushnell is an event in literature. Good sermons are twice blest: they bless the hearer and they bless the reader. They hold their own stoutly in the changing, never-satisfied reading world. They appeal to a higher yearning of the soul. They take their place on the shelves with the well-thumbed copies of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Froude. There is no nobler room in all the house of English literature than that which contains the sermons of the best English preachers from Hugh Latimer down. Hugh Latimer preaches to us now. We forget, indeed, that he was Bishop of Worcester, but we remember that he preached God's living truth in the most intrepid and manliest tones, and that he was burned at the stake. His language, just struggling into the forms of written and oratorical address, while it was homely, thoroughly English, quaint and racy, had a higher life and spirit which has preserved it. The gravest, richest, manliest language of England, the purest, the most solid and the most idiomatic, which common men use and wise men also who would reach the common mind, has come down through the religious literature of England. Taine recognizes this. He divides the religious literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-its most flourishing period-into two classes:

"Two distinct branches receive the common sap,-one above, the other beneath; one respected, flourishing, shooting forth in the open air; the other despised, half buried in the ground, trodden under foot by those who would crush it; both living, the Anglican as well as the Puritan, the one in spite of the effort made to destroy it, the other in spite of the care taken to develop it. Theologians like Hooker, John Hales, Taylor, Chillingworth, set philosophy and reason by the side of dogma. Accordingly we find a new literature arising, elevated and original, eloquent and measured."

Taine cannot so well comprehend the Puritan as he does the Anglican divines. He sees their total want of the idea of the

beautiful, without which he says there can be no true literature; he sees their stern banishment of the emotions, and of rich and splendid eloquence which the classics and the Renaissance brought into other departments of English literature; he says:

"They ignored the divine languor of Jeremy Taylor, and the touching tenderness of the gospel. Their character exhibits only manliness, their conduct austerity, their mind preciseness. We find among them only excited theologians, minute controversialists, energetic men of action, limited and patient minds, engrossed in proofs and practical labors, void of general ideas and refined tastes, resting upon texts, dry and obstinate reasoners, who twisted the Scripture in order to extract from it a form of government or a table of dogma."

He does not see-with whatever truth there is in this bitter description—the merits of the great Puritan preachers. He does not see that a literature like that of England is spiritual in its source, that it springs from the religious life of the people. The Puritan preachers cared nothing for the outward. They sought righteousness. They sought for the bare, inner, absolute idea of truth. They were rough workmen, clearing away rubbish and hewing the stones for the temple of liberty. They added nothing to the temple's ornamentation, but they laid the foundations firm and deep. They had among them sublimely contemplative minds like John Howe; and when they came to New England they brought here that same thoughtful, deeply speculating spirit which culminated in the genius of Jonathan Edwards. In some very high qualities there have been no such preachers since the time of the prophets and apostles.

Dr. Bushnell comes along fairly in the line of the Puritan New England prophets, though he is looked upon askance by many, and is regarded, in his own language, as one of "the outside saints." What a vast distance, for example, between Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Emmons-like that between Uranus and Terra-but somehow, intellectually and morally, they both belong to the same system.

Dr. Bushnell has a prime quality of a great preacher; he is an earnest theologian. Say what he may against the science of theology, it is the heaven of his mind, where his treasures and his heart are. He dwells in these high themes. He works