God in over-ruling events to purposes which their contrivers did not contemplate-God using them as he used the Assyrian of old, "howbeit he meaned not so, neither did his heart think so *;* and I will add, which their hinderers did not hope for-and feel our faith in this most comfortable and spirit-sustaining truth confirmed, that "the Lord is king, be the people never so impatient; he sitteth between the cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet." I repeat, nothing is so likely to steady the balance of the social system, which has received a shock, as the religious education of the people. For I cannot but think, that the support of good government and good order on the part of the people, to whom it is now in a great measure confided, is not so likely to come of a rational investigation of the theory of government, and of the advantages of order, as of a religious conviction that government "is ordained of God †," and that" He is the God of order‡' I cannot but think that their obedience would be more perfect when it should rest upon the precepts of God's word, than when it should result from their study of the doctrine of civil relations ; that a severe, however wholesome law, for instance, would be more likely to be received with forbearance, because the Bible (they know) encourages submission, and promises a blessing to the "meek§," than because the principles of the economist may be found to recommend it to their

good sense. I should have more hope of teaching the poor man contentment with his condition, by reminding him of the text, that "the poor shall never cease out of the land *," that the "poor we are to have always with us t;" as though such were God's decree; and again of that other text, that the "poor are chosen of God, to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him;" as though God had precious things in store for them; than by dwelling ever so long or so learnedly upon the common benefit of a diversity of ranks. I should have greater confidence in a poor man's honesty, who founded it on God's command, "Thou shalt not steal," than upon the reasonableness of the rights of property. I should have more trust in his chastity and sobriety when springing from his remembrance of the exhortation, "I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul §;" than from his acquaintance with the physical ill effects of ardent spirits, or the social convenience of the marriage bond.

I do not say that the two classes of motives conflict—I mean, the motives which enlightened secular wisdom, and those which the word of God suggests; for I believe that God has so ordered it that they do in fact concur-and that he makes his word and his world work together-the or

dinances of the word confirmed in their wisdom, and established in their truth, by the operations of the system in which we live; but I do say, that the motives in the one case are feeble in comparison of those in the other-feeble, inasmuch as possible damage to the structure of society is no restraining principle, compared with possible loss of one's soul-feeble, inasmuch as to deduce a rule of action from considerations of general expediency, is a lame and halting process compared with the ready recollection of a text which expresses the positive pleasure of the Most High.

3. But there is another light yet in which religious education should be regarded, which makes such as is secular shrink in the comparison before it. The great distinctive character of religious education is, that it stretches the view to another world; that of secular, that it circumscribes it to this. The difference, therefore, of the two systems is as marked, as between the immortal and the mortal, between infinite and finite, between eternity and time. Now, surely it is an education unworthy of a being who is to live for ever, which would fasten his mind down upon the concerns of three score years and ten; and an education, too, which will not admit of his continuing long in a world like this without discovering that a void has been left in his heart which religious principles should have filled, and for which there is no substitute. The day must come upon all, upon none sooner or more often than the poor, when another life will

obtrude itself on the thoughts, block it out how we may-when it will assert its essential majesty, shroud it how we will, for a season. In sickness, and sorrow, and disaster, and shame, when the days of our years prove few and evil-events these, which that education surely is faulty that does not contemplate; for man is born to them, and therefore should be bred for them-it is not mental endowments that will yield us repose, but those of godliness only. The broken heart is not to be bound up by the smattering, or even the mastery of a science; nor the bed of death smoothed by being able to range over the secrets of nature from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; but by the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and him crucifiedby the knowledge that our sins are pardoned through his blood-by the knowledge that we have been exercising ourselves to have a conscience void of offence-by the knowledge that God's word has been the lantern unto our feet, and the light unto our paths-the whole, the natural result, under God, of having been taught the Scriptures from childhood, which are able to make wise unto salvation; or, in other words, of religious instruction imparted betimes. But, familiar as such knowledge may seem to most of those who now hear me, it is knowledge of which numbers of the poor in this country are entirely destitute, through the want of early opportunity to attain it; and if there be one sight more sad than another—if there be one spectacle that ought

to kindle our zeal more than another for the establishment of schools of religious education for the children of the poor, it is that not unfrequently presented to a minister of God in the death-bed of an aged fellow-creature of that class, who is going before his Maker with a veil of ignorance on his heart, dense as could be found in Africa itself a stranger he to a Saviour, and all that he has done and suffered for him;-I speak to the letter, and from my own experience;-so far from renewed by the Holy Ghost, not knowing whether there be a Holy Ghost-and that man, so dull and senseless, expecting, in a few hours, and those, too, the feverish dregs of life, to be transfigured, by two or three visits of the pastor of his parish, into a lively, penitent, enlightened servant of God, fit to give in his account-a gourd of Jonah, as it were, to spring into perfection in a night!—this, I say, is a sight so utterly hopeless, that it does call aloud to all who have witnessed it, or who have heard of it from others, to do what in them lies to banish such darkness from a Christian country; and teach the Gospel to the poor, when only they can learn it effectually, in their childhood.

Whether, therefore, mankind be regarded in their own nature as frail and fallen creatures; in their relation to others as members of a social system; or in their position with respect to the present world, or the world to come, as born to sufferance here, and to immortality hereafter; no scheme of instruction can be tendered to them