SERMON VIII.

EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION.

ST. MATTHEW, xv. 16.

Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?

THIS was said by our Lord to His own disciples when he found that His words, which had not been understood by the rest of His hearers, had not been understood by them any more than by others. That others should be ignorant was not so much to be wondered at, but that Christ's own followers should be so, was sad and strange. Yet to how many thousands of Christ's disciples, of baptized Christians, in this country, might Christ's words be repeated, and unhappily with no expression of surprise. We should not say, wondering, to the great multitude of our brethren, "Are ye also yet without understanding?" but rather we should say to the few, "Have ye then been so fortunate as to gain it?"

This state of general ignorance has existed so long that it excites no surprise; in some, perhaps, it has even excited no concern. We take it as a very natural thing that many should be ignorant, as a thing indeed which can by no possibility be prevented. Some, it is true, speak a very different language, and say, "that education may be made universal, and that it is the only means of putting down crime and misery; that an educated people will be a good and happy people; therefore let us build our schools and train our schoolmasters, to set forward this blessed work of education." Let us, indeed, by all means build our schools and train our schoolmasters; for it is a blessed work to do so; I know of few works that are more blessed. But let us see what we are doing by this, and what we may hope to do; for if we expect more fruit than the tree can possibly bear, we may be disappointed without any reason, and say, "The pains that we have bestowed on this tree are wasted, we will bestow them on it no more."

Now to begin with the first step of all: it is perfectly possible to give to all our people the knowledge of reading and writing. This depends merely on the funds which can be raised; if we subscribe largely, there is no doubt that this much can certainly be done. These are things which every child can learn and will learn, if there be

any one to teach him. And let us consider what really great things these are. Those of us who can read and write have only to think what would induce them to give up their power of doing so, were such a thing possible. We can scarcely fancy ourselves without the power of reading, any more than without the power of walking. of walking. If we were without it, we should be in a manner different beings. For to be unable to read is to be cut off from all intercourse with all those who are now, or who ever have been in the world, except the very few who can be personally present with us, and speak to us with their voices. It were indeed but a little world that we lived in, if our communion with it was limited to those who at each successive hour might happen to be in our company. A friend leaves us for a few weeks, and we cannot hear him speak to us, but by reading we can have him talking to us though absent. Again, are all the things in the world worth hearing and knowing, known by those few persons whom we may happen to meet with? Do we care actually about nothing but what our neighbours, in our common intercourse with them, can tell us? I have not said a word of the highest uses to which reading can be turned, in the gaining a knowledge of things eternal. But even as a power for things merely human, it is so

great and so precious, that we who have it would as soon part with our right hands as be without it. That is the best measure of its value; and this precious gift our money can certainly purchase for every one of our countrymen; every child above an idiot can be taught to write and to read.

I confess that as schools can certainly do thus much, if they did nothing more I should think it a blessed work to multiply them. To give our brethren so great a power, the daily source of so much pleasure, a pleasure which we cannot conceive ourselves to be without, and which nothing would tempt us to forego, does seem to be in itself a very obvious work of Christian charity. I should think that if schools did this only, they would come in the very next class of usefulness, at any rate, to hospitals, asylums for the blind, or for the deaf and dumb, or to any other charitable institutions whose objects are the most simple and the most necessary.

But we are speaking to-day of schools which profess to do much more than teach reading and writing; of schools which profess to give a religious education. Now consider what a religious education in the true sense of the word is:-it is no other than a training our children to life eternal; no other than the making them know

and love God, know and abhor evil; no other than the fashioning all the parts of our nature for the very ends which God designed for them; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth, the teaching our affections to love the highest good.

Now can our schools and schoolmasters do this, as surely as they can teach children to read and write? Can they educate as certainly as they can instruct? If they can, then surely they must be the very greatest blessing in the whole world, -their value must be above all counting; to withhold them from any of our brethren is to withhold from him life eternal; to give them, is not only to open the door of the kingdom of heaven, but actually to lead men into it.

But what God's word itself cannot do surely, cannot be done by any subordinate institution in the Church. Christ appointed His Church to be for the edifying, that is, the improving or causing the growth of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Has the Church ever, from the beginning, answered fully this glorious end to all its members; has it answered it surely and of necessity? We all but too well know and feel the answer. So neither can schools and school