in the strongest manner, by the Prelate who presides over us, that there is no novelty whatever in this system, which has been proposed by the canons of the church. If I might be allowed, I would read a passage from the first accounts of Christianity, to speak to what was done at that period. "The Christians took all possible care to instruct their children in the study of the Scriptures, and to educate them in the principles of their holy religion; and schools were every where erected conjointly with the church. There were also other schools, where persons of riper years were instructed in the different branches of human learning and sacred education." (Hear.)

But, my Lord, I cannot refer to the great point of this eager thirst for knowledge which is existing throughout the world, without asking this grave and serious question, "Are we to look at this as the work of man or of God?” To the Almighty we must attribute it; and is it not our duty to make the greatest use we can of the blessings that Providence bestows upon us, to use to the utmost of our power every means he places in our reach? Are we to say "stand still, he fighteth for us, and you may hold your peace?" But are we not to speak to the people, and give them religious instruction, and give to them heavenly light? And if we look to the rising generation, advancing rapidly in the scale of knowledge; if we seek the good of the lower and the middle classes-if we seek their good and happiness, and look to the welfare and well-being of men in our country, we shall do what we can to give the widest spread of education; but we shall make religious education pre-eminent, without which we must fail; for without that course, we cannot call for the blessing of the Almighty. (Applause.)

The Rev. HUGH M'NEILE, on presenting himself, was received with the warmest demonstrations of regard and approbation. He said: My Lord,-If our only object at this meeting were to procure for our resolutions the unanimous assent of the present assembly, I might well content myself with simply seconding what has been so happily proposed. But if our object be to carry the population of this vast diocese with us, and, in so doing, to contribute our part towards carrying the population of the whole kingdom, in a mighty movement towards education of a higher character than has hitherto been aimed at, for the middle and lower classes of the community: and if in our description of that higher character, we include not only a more advanced and comprehensive intelligence but also a deeper and more consecrating piety: not only a wider range of knowledge among the creatures of God, but also a more penetrating and practical knowledge of God himself, as he is revealed in Jesus Christ, our Lord: if we would carry into our system with effect not only ingenious treatises on nature, but also the infallible canon of holy scripture, and catholic formularies of our Established Church, in which spiritual fervour and chastened sobriety maintain inviolate a scriptural equilibrium-if this be our object, then, my Lord, we have more much more to do, than gain the willing suffrages of even so distinguished and influential an assembly as the present. (Hear, hear.) We have preju

dices to combat, objection to meet, covetousness to overcome, apathy to stimulate.

The proposed terms of connexion between all local schools and the deanery or diocesan boards now to be formed, are enumerated in the resolutions under four heads. The second, third, and fourth, however valuable in themselves, are comparatively formal, but it is difficult to estimate the importance of the first, or the wisdom which has determined on the latitude which it holds out. That the terms of connexion between our schools should be made to rest, simply and broadly, on the adoption of the authorized formularies of our church, so that not a shadow of excuse shall be left for a separate school, any more than for a separate congregation, does indeed appear to me to be a decision of matured and comprehensive wisdom. The formularies of our church are characterized by all those essential principles which we can desire in a basis for religious education. With your Lordship's permission, I will take the liberty of mentioning a few of those which occur to me.

1. The first characteristic of our formularies, and of the education we desire to extend is the authoritative announcement of truth; not waiting for the comprehension, but requiring the submission of the disciple. (Cheers.)

This feature, which constitutes a high recommendation to all who sincerely value the fundamental principles of Chistianity, is, in our own times and our own country, singled out as a primary ground of objection. A party of volunteers in the cause of what they call national education -a party rendered of some consequence-more by their feverish activity than by either their arguments or their numbers-(laughter)—demand, in a tone of assumed superiority, "Is not the test of a good education that it proceeds methodically from the easier to the more difficult, from the simpler to the more complicated, from the plainer to the more abstruse?” And having laid this down as an axiom of universal application, they proceed to ask, with an air of anticipated triumph, "Is the Bible an easy book? Is it simple? Is it plain? Is it accessible to the intellect of a child?"

My Lord, I feel it to be of the utmost consequence that the appearance of argument contained in such appeals should be met, and the reality of their sophistry exposed. (Cheers.) There is an appearance of argument in the implied analogy between education, in science, arts, languages, among men, and education in religion revealed from God, while the secret of sophistry lies concealed in the convenient but gratuitous assumption of such analogy. We deny that any such analogy exists. (Cheers. On the contrary, there is a complete contrast between the two subjects. The various departments of human learning, originating in the exercise of the senses and the simplest deductions of the reasoning faculty; progressively improved by discovery and combination and comparison; still remaining imperfect; and inviting to further improvement, may and ought to be communicated to the scholar in the gradually advancing aspect which has characterised their attainment by the master. But to treat Christianity thus, is, at once, to compromise its character. It is to deal with it as with a science

progressively discovered by man and susceptible of progressive improvement; and so to yield its high distinguishing claim as an authoritative, undiscoverable, and unimprovable communication from the living God. (Cheers.)

While, therefore, we concede readily, that in human sciences the method advocated is the right method, and therefore adopt it ourselves; we must strenuously deny that it is properly applicable to religion. (Cheers.)

Any communication from God, which contains any measure of information concerning himself, must, from the nature of the case, involve what is beyond all created understanding. God is infinite. The highest created understanding is finite. Between these there is and can be no comparison. It follows that the position of every created intelligence, with respect to God, must be either one of total ignorance or one of submissive reception at some point upon authority: either one of utter blindness, which sees nothing, or one of limited horizon, creating, by the little that is seen, a devout consciousness of an immensity remaining unseen. Who can, by searching, find out God? There must be an horizon to the loftiest angelic intellect. The good pleasure of Jehovah sets bounds to the lucubrations of intelligence as truly as to the motions of matter. The proud waves of the sea and the proud pretentions of fallen man are under the same control; and whatever be the instrumentality employed, whether the attraction of gravitation and the centrifugal impetus of our system in the case of matter; or the unveiling of a glimpse at his own infinite majesty in the case of mind, still the language of his sovereignty is "Hitherto shall thou come and no further;" while the confession of the clearest contemplation of even an inspired man is, "Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour ! (Great cheering.)

Is there then no place for the exercise of human reason in the truths of revealed religion? Oh! yes! Because in some things it has pleased God, not only to reveal, but also to explain.

It has pleased Him to explain, for example, the apparently irreconcilable contradiction between perfect justice and perfect mercy in simultaneous exercise: perfect justice requiring unfailing obedience to every command of a holy law,-or strict and rigourous execution of the whole penalty of disobedience; and perfect mercy, extending free and loving, and reclaiming forgiveness to the vilest transgressors. (Cheers.)

To the deist who rejects the explanation these are still irreconcilable, and his notion of Deity, if accurately analysed, will be found to be a combination of imperfections. (Hear, hear.) Imperfect justice making way for mercy at a certain stage, and imperfect mercy giving place to justice at a certain other stage of human character, that stage conveniently transferable at the option of the self-deceiver.

The revealed explanation is in the person and work of our glorious Redeemer "God and man in one Christ," in human nature made under the law, doing all that holy man was required to do, and suffering all that guilty man deserved to suffer, while His divine nature, in the unity of that wondrous person, invested every act and every pang with an

infinite meritoriousness providing for the essential righteousness of the divine government, that, in the language of the apostle, "God might be just, and the justifier of him that beleiveth in Jesus." (Cheers.) On this point, we are thus furnished with reasons, with a line of argument addressed to our intellect, and here it becomes a high duty to clear and distinct views, and to be able reasonably to refer to them. This is a branch of revelation on which it is worse than affectation not to reason.

On the subject of the Trinity (on the contrary) no explanation is vouchsafed. It is revealed and stands in the horizon. If by the revelation of some other truth, the Trinity were advanced into the nearer ground of reason and argument, then that other truth would, in its turn, occupy the place of the horizon; inviting the contemplations of the believer into the remoter depths of Deity but still leaving an undiscovered infinity behind! (Cheers.)

It is thus in the case already adduced. Had the scriptural statements concerning the exercise of perfect justice and perfect mercy been given without any mention of the atonement, they would have been as inexplicable to us as the Trinity is now. But by the revelation of the person and work of Christ those statements are explained. They are advanced into the nearer ground of reason and argument; while the truth, which they forward, occupies the horizon behind them, and we are called to bow before "the mystery of the holy incarnation." (Cheers.) I am aware how this argument, concerning the mysteries of revelation, has been perverted to the defence of the contradictions of priestcraft, and how the submission of understanding, which we claim in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, has been claimed in the case of the invention of transubstantiation. But here again there is sophistry in the implied parallelism, for the cases are not at all parallel.

Independent of the highest ground of difference, that the one is revealed and the other is not, it may be fairly urged that, in the one case the subject matter of the proposition is above the sphere of man's reason. He can conclude nothing certainly a priori concerning the Godhead, and therefore, an assertion concerning God, although seeming to involve a contradiction in terms, cannot be proved really to do so. There may, in truth, be no contradiction at all, the harmony of the statement being revolvable into some hitherto undiscovered depth in the lofty subject. In the other case, the subject matter of the proposition is an object of sense, and all its properties are within the reach and examination of reason. We We can conclude with certainty concerning flour and water, and therefore an assertion concerning bread, which a contradiction in terms, can be proved to be really contradictory. There remains no undiscovered region wherein a reconciling harmony can be supposed to lodge. An attempt has, indeed, been made, in the language of the schoolmen, to imply the existence of some such region, by ascribing not only properties but accidents to matter: accidents, on the strength of which it has been gravely affirmed, that, while all the properties are entirely changed, flour into flesh, water into blood, the senses of men continue wholly unconscious of any change. The wide-spread success of

this attempt to get up a mystery bears ample testimony to the ignorance of past ages, and has led to such habits and associations as render emancipation from its absurdity, even in our times, little less than a moral miracle. In this point of view, as well as many others, the reformation was indeed a blessing; and it is one of the high and satisfactory privileges of the sons of the reformation, with the formularies of our church in their hands, to know and feel that in defending the submission of mind indispensible for the reception, in the last resort, of the profound mysteries of revelation, we are in no way involved in a principle which would bind us to receive in like manner the inventions and traditions of men. (Cheers.) One step more. Among the truths which legitimately belong to the reasoning faculty of man, we recognize the statements of history, with the deductions fairly derived therefrom; and among these the external evidences for the inspiration of the scriptures. To these we invite inquiry. Upon these we inculcate reasoning. Then, being reasonably satisfied of the divine origin of the Bible, on examination of evidence, we proceed, as reasonably, to submit our minds to the contents of the Bible, on the authority of the divine speaker. (Cheers.)

And so, in the education we desire to extend. Having the eternal interests of man chiefly at the heart, in other words, his relation to God involving, as we have seen, truths which pass all understanding; perceiving, also, that those truths, all indispensible as they are towards human happiness, are entirely matter of divine revelation-communications from authority, to be received with submission-we aim at the cultivation of this submission in the young mind: and reject, as fraught with the extremest peril, any theory or any system which goes to make man's intelligence the measure of acknowledged truth. Such a system, in the habit of mind which it engenders, can only prove a nursery for infidelity. We address ourselves to reasonable CREATURES-and we desire to give due weight to both those words-rejoicing in the privilege of reason, and not losing sight of the dependance of creatureship. Hear, then, my lord, in the first place, we ground our sacred attachment to the scriptural formularies of our church, as the basis of religious education. They maintain in the dignity of truth the high character of authoritative announcement. They do not invite the learner to comprehend first, and then to admit. They proclaim, upon the authority of God, what no human learner can ever comprehend. (Cheers.)

2. Another reason for the high value we set upon the authorised formularies of our church, as the basis of religious education, is, that they refer to the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, without exception, mutilation, or partiality.

This also, which we regard as a high recommendation, is made the ground of serious objection by many. It is urged that, owing to the peculiar circumstances of a large class of our population, the introduction of the whole Bible into a general system of education is utterly hopeless— that a part of it is better than none at all; and that, consequently, we should yield our own preference for the whole, if we can thereby secure the introduction and use of a part. (Laughter.)

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