state, the mass of your poor, like the base of the cone, if it be unsteady and insecure, will quickly endanger every superincumbent part. Religious education, then, is the spring of public tranquillity. It not only cherishes the interior principle of conscience; but by infusing the higher sentiments of penitence and faith and gratitude and the hope of salvation and the love of God, communicates the elements of a cheerful and uniform subjection to all lawful authority. The uneducated and irreligious, on the contrary, are a ready prey to every seducer, whether in politics or religion. They have no steady principles of morals. Their rule is habit, their guide passion, their controul selfishness, their end pleasure or power or gain.

But, indeed, if, independently of the safety of the community, our own domestic happiness only were concerned, who does not perceive how largely his personal comforts are derived from the fidelity and good principles of his servants, especially those with whom his children are most conversant. Now the schools you are establishing are to train up these future inmates of your families the very nurses and attendants, of whose defects you are now so ready to complain, and whose piety you should cheerfully purchase, by bestowing on them in early life the means of a religious education. For in what way can a succession of intelligent, mo

dest, obedient, faithful, pious domestic servants be nurtured, but by implanting early the seeds of all these Christian graces and virtues-not to speak of all the other situations in your families and establishments for trade and commerce, into which the present children of the poor will hereafter be introduced; and where they will bring, and will act upon, the principles of conduct with which you now familiarize them.

And amidst all the methods of instructing the young, especially in populous neighbourhoods, none appears so admirable as the NATIONAL SCHOOLS. The happy invention of teaching children by means of themselves, the surprising measure of attention and interest which is excited in their minds, the accuracy with which their lessons are acquired and retained, the rapid proficiency which is made, and the comparatively trifling expense at which the whole is achieved, seem to unite the very points most desirable in education, and yet hitherto the most unattainable; whilst the only serious objection-that of a dangerous spirit of emulation, appears not to deserve a comparison with the actual benefits conferred-to say nothing on any doubts as to the validity of the objection itself.

Nor is it a small matter that our population should be trained from their earliest years in a decent reverence for the services of our

Church, and a conscientious observance of the duties of public worship, together with that early acquaintance with the elementary principles of the Christian faith, which may asso

ciate the formularies of our devotion with the first principles of their knowledge, and prepare them to become enlightened and well-informed members of the national Church. Nothing can be more certain than that a neglect of the ordinances of piety in the children of the poor, can only lead to confirmed indifference or hostility in advanced life. And, on the contrary, it is surely the bounden duty of the members of the Church to nurture the young in that pure form of religion which has blessed their own hearts, which they engaged to bestow on them when they presented them at the font of baptism, and which they can only effectually communicate by connecting early and devout habits of piety with the progress of their knowledge. Indeed, it would be more than surprising if, whilst all confessions of Christians in this country, as well as every other, including the Roman Catholics and every description of Protestants, educate their offspring in the peculiar tenets of their own belief, we alone should be found so unfaithful to our trust as to omit the inculcation of religious principle in the instruction we convey, and leave the young exposed to all the possible forms of error-in other

words, to the guidance of a corrupt nature in a corrupt world.

If these observations be at all applicable generally to the subject of the NATIONAL SoCIETY, they acquire an additional force from the circumstances of this particular School for which I now solicit your charitable bounty. In a large manufacturing parish of seventeen thousand inhabitants, where the proportion of poor is so immense, and where the means therefore of education on the part of the parents must be so inadequate, no call of Christian charity can be more importunate. The schools which are now erected are designed to instruct one thousand or twelve hundred children. A plain but beautiful edifice has been raised by the munificent contributions of the various persons connected in different ways with the chief manufacture of the neighbourhood, aided by the donations of several dignitaries and distinguished persons in Church and State. Already has a temporary room been employed for several months, and three hundred and fifty children have been receiving education, whose progress and good behaviour give some pledge of the benefits likely to result from the present design. On visiting this. school during the last week I was delighted in examining the several classes, and in observing the good order and proficiency which were apparent. The accuracy with which the highest class,

including some who had not been in the school more than eight or nine months, read a chapter from the Old Testament, and replied to all the questions which I proposed to them from it, surpassed my highest expectations, and confirmed the judgment I had previously formed of the tendency of these admirable establishments. The moral effects also which I was informed had already appeared in the children and in the families to which they belonged, and which were beginning to have an influence throughout the parish, may encourage the hope that many of these scholars will not only attain to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, but will be thereby made wise unto Salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And when it is considered that five thousand children, in this parish alone, were found to be without the means of education, and that the majority of those already admitted were previously allowed to wander through the streets of the neighbourhood in negligence and vice, it may easily be imagined what the real amount of ultimate good may, under the blessing of God, eventually be.

Yield then, my brethren, to the holy emotion which I cannot but hope has been excited in your minds, by these plain but affecting statements. It is God who has appointed the various orders of society, and appointed them for the very purpose that the affluent may assist