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THE STREAKS OF THE DAWN.

When darkness and danger surround the benighted traveller who has lost his path, how anxiously does he watch for the coming of the morning, and how joyfully does he hail the first signs of the dawn! Similar is the interest with which the spiritual Christian, whose mind is imbued with New Church views, watches the coruscations that indicate the approach of the day he believes to be near. In the natural dawn the first symptoms of daybreak are often temporarily swallowed up in the gloom, and the observer doubts whether what he believed to indicate that the morning is near was anything beyond a transient gleam. At length when the east begins to be streaked with the early rays of the twilight, and the tops of the mountains begin to stand out in well-defined outline against the sky, all doubt is dissipated, the morning has begun to break, and the day draws near.

The world is emerging from a long night of spiritual darkness. Often has the spiritual watcher, whilst contemplating the moral and spiritual phases of society, doubted whether they indicated progress or retrogression, till some well-defined evidence of advancement, like a streak of light in the east, has made the fact palpable to his convictions.

These reflections have been occasioned by the efforts now in progress for reclaiming the criminal population of this country. Some three-quarters of a century since Sunday schools were inaugurated, and have doubtless accom

INFORMATION.

plished much, as one of the most powerful instruments in the civilization of the masses. Still there is a large class whieh Sunday schools have not reached; this is the criminal population. Born of criminal parents, cradled in crime and squalor, and familiarized with every form of vice from earliest infancy, the conditions of their position shut them out from the advantages of these institutions, and every advancement effected by their means only widened the gulf which separates them from the other classes of society. The feculent mass has thus accumulated, and lain and festered, spreading moral infection, disease, and death, notwithstanding all the means of repression which the powers of the State could wield.

Ragged schools have doubtless reached a large class which Sunday schools could not; nevertheless their effects are rather palliative than remedial. When from school, the pupils were assailed by the same temptations, the same demands, and the same exigencies as before; and the impressions for good that had been made were in most instances effaced by force of the circumstances by which they were surrounded. These efforts have been succeeded by Reformatories for Juvenile Offenders, which are intended, like the Cities of Refuge of old, to shield the youthful delinquents from the Nemesis of crime and ruin that pursues them when once they have entered on the course. Manchester, too, a still more important step has been taken in the founding of an institution for the education of the neglected, but not yet criminal children.

In

At the annual meeting of the friends and supporters of the former of these institutions-the Manchester and Sal ford Reformatory for Juvenile Criminals, beld in the former city on the 22nd of February last, many particulars of varied, and in some instances startling, interest were presented to the audience. The Rev. R. E. Brooke, for instance, in seconding the adoption of the report, stated the following facts bearing on the dark side of the picture:-"It was calculated," he said, "there were 40,000 persons living in England by depredation," an army more numerous than that by which the field of Waterloo was won, whilst "there were about 3,000 recruits every year." On the other side the Rev. Sidney Turner, Her Majesty's inspector of Reformatories, in a letter to Mr. Robert Gladstone, bears witness to the Reformatories having diminished juvenile crime to the extent of 30 per cent. The sentiments to which the principal speakers gave utterance, indicate moreover a fuller and better defined conception of what is contemplated in the movement thus entered on. At the head we may place some remarks in a leading article from the Manchester Examiner and Times of the previous day, directing attention to the meeting and the institution :-"To-morrow, the annual meeting of the Manchester and Salford Reformatory supporters takes place in the Town Hall, King-street. The committee of management have an interesting report to present to the subscribers, and a progress to announce which is highly encouraging to further efforts in the direction of juvenile reformation. Manchester is manfully grappling with the great social problem. By means of the munificent donation we announced on Saturday, its institution for the education of neglected, but not yet criminal children, in Ardwick Green, is fairly placed in a position of working efficiency. The Reformatory for those of the same neglected class who have been initiated into a career of crime is still an experiment; giving, however, results more favourable to the philosophy which seeks to stem the current of criminality than to that which would let it alone. The laisser faire philosophy is con demned alike by remote and recent experience. A century ago, offenders, young and old, were let alone. The result was that every highway in Eng.

land was the constant scene of murder and robbery, and society could only square accounts with the robber army, by stringing up a dozen of them at a time at Tyburn. The prevalent type of crime in our day is vastly changed. *** It is not so characterised by bloody violence. With the growth of population and the multiplication of the numbers engaged in every lawful pursuit, the professional criminals have increased and are still increasing. The successful plunderers of society are those who have entered on their career in childhood. The Manchester and Salford Reformatory, and other similar institutions, are simply an acknowledgment of this unwelcome, but still to some extent hopeful truth."

The results, so far as they have yet become manifest, are of the most hopeful kind.

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"One inmate of the Reformatory," we still quote from the same article, lating his experience, says he stole first from want, and then because he liked it.' He is now both honest and industrious, and evidently clings to the Reformatory for the same reason,-that he likes it.' The report to be read tomorrow intimates that ten of the fortysix inmates of the Reformatory will be ready in a few weeks to take industrial situations at home or in the colonies, where some of them have already got employment."

The report gives the following details, which at the time show what has been effected, and also illustrates the kind of population the institution has to deal with:

:

"The total number of inmates during the past year had been 53. Of these 35 had been under sentence, and the remainder had come of their own accord, or been brought by their parents. There had been 23 boys admitted in the course of the year, with one exception, under sentence; four boys had been discharged, three having gone to situations, and one, a hopeless invalid, to the workhouse. Two had absconded; one had left with the approval of his parents, who brought him in the first instance, and the remaining 46 are at the present inmates of the institution. Two boys had attempted to abscond, one of whom had been 23 times in prison, and been apprehended 100 times at least. Of the 46 boys in the institution 16 had been

convicted once, 7 twice, 19 three times or more, 3 have been apprehended, but not convicted, and one has never been apprehended or convicted. Nineteen have lost one or both parents, 30 had drunken parents, and 26 had criminal parents. Thirteen of the 46 did not know the alphabet when admitted, 10 knew the alphabet only, 11 could read a little, but not write, 11 could read and write imperfectly, and one only could read and write well. As regards religious knowledge, 19 did not know the name of Christ, and 27 possessed religious knowledge more or less imperfect."

The class at whose reformation the institution mainly aims, is not so much children falling casually and оссаsionally into crime, bnt those who are making dishonesty their regular and chosen pursuit, and who either by choice or habit, or force of circumstances, belong to the criminal class. These, Mr. Turner (in his letter already referred to) remarks, "are the ringleaders and missionaries by whom fresh recruits are constantly inveigled into this class, and whose removal and long detention under corrective discipline is of importance, not only as regards their own probable conversion and rescue from dishonest and vicious courses, but as regards also the safety and welfare of the community, especially the poorer classes and working men, whose children are the victims of their persuasion or example."

The same gentleman truly remarks in conclusion:

"The Christian naturally takes it up in a missionary spirit, and regards it in its more religious aspect, as the work of saving souls from death; but the community are interested in it in a more directly selfish point of view. They have themselves to protect from the young thief's depredations, and they have their poorer neighbours to protect from his corrupting influence and associations. This, of course, the state chiefly looks to. This is the ground which magistrates would take in voting funds from the county and borough rates. They know that one successful and clever young thief, to go at large, makes many more. He is the centre of a continually extending circle. His crime propagates; and the cheapest and most effectual preservative that can be applied for others, as well as the best remedy for himself, is the reformatory,

when made steadily a place of consistent discipline, a place in which labour and order, exertion and self-control, are steadily enforced."

Mr.

Another hopeful feature is the virtual abandonment of dogmatic theology in these efforts, and the recognition of the practical aspects of religion. If it were true that the doctrine of justification by faith only was the palladium of Christianity, and the source of all Christian virtues and graces, here is a field where its efficacy might be practically demonstrated, and its influence brought to bear on pollution and crime of no ordinary dye. Like many an ingenious theory, however, it will not stand in the presence of the stern realities of the world. Turner has far greater faith in the efficiency of "steady consistent discipline," and the enforcement of habits of "labour, order, and self-control." Even the Bishop of Manchester, who presided, notwithstanding his evident leanings to what is known as the Evangelical party in the Church, although he made the doctrine of the Atonement an exception, virtually ackowledged the correctness of the view propounded by Mr. Turner. Referring to a remark of Lord John Russell, when he opened the branch of the Industrial School in Ardwick Green, to the effect that the great difficulty with these institutions was the religious question, the Bishop added, there would be no such difficulty there. "They did not want to indoctrinate the children in that reformatory in doctrinal subtleties, but in religious realities. They wanted to inculcate the principles of the existence and attributes and being of a God, the immutable distinction between right and wrong, and the duty of endeavouring to follow the precepts of the Scripture." And there is no doubt that as Christians pursue the great movements which have been inaugurated in the present age, they will find the worthlessness of the "doctrinal subtleties" which have so long distracted the Christian world. The doctrine of justification by faith alone, of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, and of substitution, with others of a similar stamp, it will be found, furnish no aid, but are rather impediments to the reclaiming of the criminal population. The school in which these have been trained, and the ingenuity they have acquired, will soon enable them to detect the inconse.