Lord STANLEY rose amidst the most enthusiastic manifestations of applause. He said-My Lord Bishop, ladies, and gentlemen, if your Lordship has felt, as doubtless you must have felt, that it was an ungrateful task to draw back the attention of this great assembly from those high and holy matters of our faith which have been propounded and brought before us with so much power of eloquence, with language whose eloquence is only to be surpassed by its evident and manifest sincerity (Applause)-to the ordinary details of that practical business. which we are called upon to consider this day, how much more must I have the same feelings upon whom the ungrateful task has devolved of following an argument of such high and holy subjects, with practical details in which I have already been anticipated by previous speakers? My Lord, in the audience that I have more practice and habit of addressing, I am generally encountered with more opposition, of seeing less of harmony, and of seeing sometimes even less of order, than in that I am addressing. (Laughter.)

And yet, my Lord, believe me, that that very circumstance adds not inconsiderably to the difficulties of the position in which I find myself. I find no arguments here to combat ; I find no truths and no opinions which can be re-stated with more power and more energy and more eloquence than they have already been dealt with by preceding speakers. Nay more, witnessing what I see this day, I do not think that we have even it before us as a necessary and indispensible task, which was stated by the Rev. Gentlemen who preceded me, namely to kindle enthusiasm and to stimulate the apathy of our hearers. (Loud applause.) And yet, my Lord, on such an occasion, I would fain not bear the silent testimony of my presence to the goodness of the great cause in which you are embarked.

My Lord, it were little for me to say that I cordially concur in the resolution which has been placed in my hands; because if I did not, I trust there are many here who know me well enough to be assured that sooner than bring it before you, the hand which held it should be cut off. But my Lord, I go much further, and I say that I feel myself most highly honoured in having been selected as the instrument of bringing before you here, in this assembly, the particular resolution with which I have been entrusted, embodying, as it does, principles the most vital, and combining them as it appears to me, with details the most essential. My Lord, I have no hesitation in saying, that it is my earnest, my anxious desire, by every means in my power, and upon every occasion in which I feel that I can do so, to promote, to extend, to increase the influence, and the sphere of usefulness of that established church, of which I am a sincere and an attached follower. Conscientious men may differ, they have differed, and they will differ again as to how far it may be the duty, or within the competency of the state to interfere with, to control, to promote, or to regulate the national education of their people. Conscientious men may differ, and have differed, yet more widely how far, if that interference and control and encouragement be expedient or practicable in principle; I use the word principle as applied to the state; how far I say that interference,

or that regulation shall be influenced in any way, one or the other, by the religious persuasions of the community for whom it is provided. But my Lord, whatever difference of opinion may exist upon the duties of the state, in this respect, I feel convinced, that not in this assembly, nay more, I feel convinced that in no assembly of the friends or of the opponents of our church, would there be felt a hesitation on the part of the man of sincerity, what was our duty as individuals, or what was our duty in our collective capacity, as members belonging to that church establishment. If we believe its doctrines, if we are convinced of its purity, if we are attached to its principles, and if we believe that its influence, salutary here, is yet more important hereafter, there is not a man that could hesitate to say, if we believe these things, it is our duty to promote their influence and extend them. (Applause.) But my Lord, I hear it often said, "what has the church, what has any religious body, as a religious body, to do with the education of the people? Why interfere at all ?-why not leave it as in all ordinary circumstances for that common and well known rule of political economy, that the supply and demand must necessarily regulate each other? Nay, if you must interfere, why not interfere as with a matter of state policy? why not place the education of the people under lay control, so that all may be partakers of the benefit you propose to give? What has the church to do more particularly with the education of the people? My Lord, those who ask these questions, are those who are most deeply tainted with the most prevailing error of the present day. (Hear.) Why not leave it for the demand to regulate the supply? My Lord, I say, as has been said with much force, by the Rev. gentleman who preceded me," the things of religion are not as the things of earth in these matters;" they must be looked at by different views, and regulated by different principles. The temporal wants cannot exist without their being felt; the man who needs them most, is most anxious to obtain them, and he creates the demand which will cause the supply. In spiritual things, my Lord, it is otherwise; where the need is the greatest, the demand is the least; and so far from its being the case that the demand and the supply must check and regulate each other; it is in spiritual things that that supply must necessarily first be found to create and make the demand that it professes to supply. And moreover there is this happy, and this providential circumstance attached also, that an indefinitely increasing supply will generate and augment an indefinite and increasing demand. But my Lord, to the other questions, what have the church to do, or what have all the members of that church to do as a body with education? My answer must depend upon what meaning you attach to the word education. If it be merely as in common acceptance, it is too often treated, as the means of acquiring those ordinary mechanical powers which shall hereafter enable the learner to obtain the knowledge, it may be of good, but more probably of evil; if it be merely the reading and writing and elementary portions of instruction, which are not education, but the means by which education is hereafter to be obtained, if that be the limit and design of which you speak, I say the church, as a religious body, has

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nothing to do with it. Nay more, if education be the sharpening of the intellectual faculties, the exercise of the mind, the storing it with all which for this life is termed useful knowledge, the acquisition of all the science which in the present age has made such vast and increasing strides, if this indeed be education, it may be the duty of the members and ministers of our church, sedulously to watch and guard its progress; but they can have little to do in the promotion of such progress; but if, my lord, the object of education be a higher and holier objectif it be, not the expansion and cultivation alone of the mind, (though that it must be, but combined with higher things;) if it be not the training of the mind and intellect, but the cultivation of the heart and of the soul; if the object be not to enable a man decently to pass through that state of society in which he has been placed by providence here, to pass with a fair and unblemished name, to attain the degree of science which may push him forward in his profession, or those attainments which may enable him to keep up with the march of the age; but, if it be more than this, if it be, not to train the body and mind for this life, but if it be to train the soul for immortality-that immortality whose character may depend wholly for countless ages, with fearful alternatives in the balance, upon the education he shall here receive; my lord, what higher, what holier, what nobler object, what more legitimate source of influence, what more touching and engaging theme of action, what more sacred and imperative duty can there be imposed on the ministers of the religion of universal love and charity, than so to fit, not only the multitude of souls who may come under the immediate guidance and control, but their successors, their children it may be, and their childrens' children, so long as time shall last, for that state of being which shall come when time shall be no more. And here, my Lord, is my answer, why we are met together as members of that church, clerical and lay combined in that union, which, from the first days of its existence to the last days, I trust will subsist, here we are to promote that which we conceive to be a duty on ourselves as members of that church, and infinitely important to generations yet unborn, and for purposes and towards ends unfathomable by human minds. But, my Lord, is there any ground why we should now interfere? Your lordship has spoken, and in terms which must give the highest gratification, on the progress of education in this diocese especially; my lord, I am sure you would be the last to say, that because so much has been done little remains yet to do: and when we look round into those details, with which I will not weary this assembly; when we see so vast a proportion of the population of this country are still wholly and entirely uneducatedhow large a portion of the remainder are brought up in alienation from, not in love and in veneration of that church we revere, is there not a strain upon us to promote education, and not only so, but according to the principles and doctrines of our own church. My Lord, in the statistics of education, we are comparatively little informed; but my noble friend who sits near me, (Lord Sandon,) was member of a committee of the House of Commons, which sat last year, and received some information which bears very much on this subject in this district,

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According to the calculations made of the number of children between the ages of 3 and 13, or with little variation between 5 and 15, when the period of education may be almost said unhappily to terminate, amongst the middle and working classes, that portion of the population amounts to no less than one fourth of the whole; and excluding those of the higher classes that can obtain education of a higher class and more expensive character, and those who unhappily from the exigencies of ther parents are compelled to forego the advantages of education, making all these deductions the calculation is that one-eighth of the population at least ought to be provided for. And what is the fact? Instead of oneeighth of the population, who have the power of profiting by education if they had the means of obtaining it, in lieu of one-eighth that ought to be provided, the number that is provided for is one-twentieth, one twenty-fifth, one thirty-fifth, and in some melancholy instances onefortieth of the whole body. (Hear.) My Lord, it is in evidence-in fearful evidence, that, there are from eight to ten thousand children at this moment growing up in the heart of London, and in one parish, in utter ignorance, not only of worldly education which may fit them partially, and very partially for the duties of their after education, but of the fundamental truths of vital Christianity. Is not this appalling, my Lord ?-I use no less a word—that in a Christian country, in the heart of the Christian metropolis, and in one parish, ten thousand children at one time should be growing up to add to the unhappy mass of ignorance and of misery and of vice. (Hear.) My Lord, need I appeal to the benevolence, to the enlightened benevolence of a Christian community in such a case? Can it be-one might well have asked, “can such things be in this our day," but can it be, that we, Christian men, that you ministers of the gospel of Christ, that we, such of us, who are fathers and heads of families, and such of us who as statesmen, are charged with the social welfare of the community; that such of us as are responsible stewards of the bounty of providence which has blessed us with a temporal abundance, not unaccompanied by an eternal responsibility, can it be, my Lord, that before our eyes in our own country, subject to the action and operation of our own senses, we should see these things and not stretch forth a hand to help them? (Hear.) 66 Whoso seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him," (Hear, hear;) and if this be true with regard to the temporary necessities of this life, my Lord, how much more true, and how much more deeply impressive with regard to the eternal world for which there is so little time for any provision? My Lord, it is but a subordinate consideration, and yet it is one that on this occasion it is necessary I should impress upon you, from that number of children so educated, being a miserable proportion of the population which does obtain an education, defective as that education is in many instances, imperfect as it is in almost all, it is a melancholy fact to be contemplated, to know and confess that above one half of those children who receive any education, are trained up in alienation and perhaps in hostility to the established church. My Lord, it is right to say that a great proportion of the remainder are under the

training of that religious denomination which least differs from the established church; I speak of course of the exertions made by the Wesleyan Methodists. But, my Lord, it is the unhappy constitution of our nature, and more especially in religious than in worldly matters, that we are too apt to overlook the 99 points of agreement, and stick with pertinacity to the hundredth of disagreement. The child brought up in no connexion with the established church, passes from alienation to jealousy, jealousy begets bitterness and animosity, and children trained up by Teachers who would fain rest in union and harmony with a Church which they revere, gradually become more and more widely separated, and swell the mass of those who desire to subvert our church. (Hear, hear.) My Lord, of whom is this growing mass composed? How many are there who find it a convenient course-a desirable course, each for his own views, to unite in hostility to the established church. It is not the religious dissenter alone who desires to weaken the establishment which supports doctrines that he believes to be fundamentally erroneous, there is the political dissenter who dreads the political influence of the church, on the social condition of the people;-(Loud cries of hear.)-with both is combined the infidel who cares little for forms or creeds, all of which he respects alike, that is not at all, who is desirous through the sides of the church of England of inflicting a deadly wound against all religion: (Hear.) And when these are all combined against us, who shall say the time is not come when it behoves the church to buckle on her armour-for our Zion to awake and put on her beautiful garments-and when it is the duty of every member of the church, heart and soul and hand to combine in that great movement of which this meeting is a very small portionthat great movement which I trust will spread over every portion of this empire-one vast net of which we are but a single mesh, altogether working an harmonious system from one end to the other of our country. My Lord, I cannot pass over this part of the subject without adverting with the most cordial concurrence to the doctrine put forth by the Rev. gentleman who preceded me, that the terms of union should be as light as possible; and pursuing the metaphor into which I was led, let me say that the bond will not lose any of its strength from its lightness, because it adds to the elasticity; nay, that very elasticity which some might think would weaken it, will be found in the end the surest source of strength. (Hear and applause.) My Lord, it is necessary for me to say a few words and they will be very few, on the present resolution; they shall be as few that is, as possible consistently with my wish to be clearly understood. My Lord, there are three great leading propositions in this resolution, which are, as I said in the outset important details in carrying into effect the great objects we have undertaken, namely, that a training school should be established for masters; that that training school should be at Chester, and that in each Deanery schools should be established for the commercial and working classes, with one of each in a convenient situation, as model schools for the neighbourhood. My Lord, we rightly say as the first part of our proposition, that a training school should be established for masters. I believe there is