SERMON ΧΙ.

"And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures." 2 Tim. iii. 16.

THE young man to whom this Epistle is addressed, was the bosom friend of the apostle Paul. The attachment which commenced between them early in their ministerial career was invigorated afterwards by a variety of circumstances. They were fellow-travellers in their missiononce, at least, they were imprisoned together-when possible, they were associated in official labors and during the intervals of temporary separation, they had maintained an affectionate correspondence. Hence it is, that St. Paul so frequently mentions him in his writings. He alludes in several instances, to the kindness and assiduity of his friendship-the generosity of his character-the eminence of his Christian attainments; and more than once does he speak of him under the endearing appellation of Brother. Indeed, few persons seem to have surpassed this young disciple in the engaging and dignified consistency of his demeanor; especially his religious deportment, was correct beyond ordinary precedent. He appears to have been thoughtful from childhood and that too in a situation by no means the most favorable for his father was a professed infidel. His education, however, was superintended by his mother and grandmother, both of whom were pious, and therefore solicitous to mould his principles by the sacred volume. They led him early in life to the fountain of inspired truth. They delineated to his opening mind the relations which he sustained towards God. They carried him in the arms of prayer to the mercy-seat; and the result was, that his first views received a virtuous bias. As he advanced in years, a reflecting and serious disposition gave him respectability; and in the end he became prepared by personal religion, for the commanding attitude he afterwards assumed in the Church of Christ.

Now, I do not affirm, my hearers, that a similar system of education is in every instance rewarded with the same success; but I do say, and it is very much the doctrine of the text, that a virtuous direction of mind, a useful and respectable standing in the world, and not unfrequently a radical renovation of heart, are results on which we may legitimately calculate when we impart to children in season a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.

I say, we may expect a virtuous bias to be given the mind. The morality of the Bible, especially in regard to children, stands decidedly unrivalled in the ethical world. Let it take them before the affections are debased, or the habits corrupted, and it will exert an influence through the whole moral system. At all events, it will pre-occupy the ground and impose a set of salutary restraints; growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength; from which few will afterwards be able entirely to escape. Nor is this all: not only will it neutralise in a great degree the temptations of vice, but it will be constantly enlarging its own dominion, and securing its own efficacy and power. It will arrest those angry, selfish, and frequently immortal propensities, which, on the one hand, the whole intercourse with the world is calculated to inspire, and a necessary immaturity of judgment on the other cannot be supposed successfully to resist. By diffusing the light of Revelation, it will disperse that midnight of moral ignorance, of which vice invariably takes advantage to steal from its concealment in the heart, and triumph in the publicity of its depredations. But on a point like this, I need not enlarge. It is enforced too powerfully by experience to need proof; for there is, perhaps, no man accustomed to watch the operations of his own mind, but must have felt that his character, whether good or bad, was decided very much by the impressions and views of his youth; and surely, if such be the fact, what single feature of life can be conceived of greater importance than that which is instamped by religi. ous instruction, and perpetuated through subsequent years by all our strongest, because our earliest associations?

I have said, that an acquaintance in childhood with the Holy Scriptures is often the basis of respectability and usefulness in the world. Society imposes certain restraints on all its members; it demands an interchange of kindness, decorum, and good faith. It says to the ardor and impetuosity of the human passions, "Hitherto shall ye come, but no further." Now, to prepare the rising generation for these observances-observances, without which the whole mechanism of life would be incurably disordered, to do this, there is nothing so important as to give them the Bible. It forms their principles as well as curbs their excesses; and seldom is a child beyond the danger of crime, except when the penalties of human law are sanctioned and enforced by an enlightened conscience. Look into our prisons, and trace to an incipient cause the brutality and insubordination which they confine. Does not the disclosure apprise us in a vast majority of cases, either that no religious views had been formed in youth, or, if they were, that they had been effaced by a violent and unnatural effort of wickedness? On the other hand, when we enter any well-regulated community, we easily discover where it bestows its confidence and where it dispenses its favors. It is to the judicious-the sober-the reflecting: it is to men, on whom, because they have fixed and correct principles, there can be a safe dependence. Sometimes, indeed, genius, or family, or fortune may overleap this rule; but such instances so seldom occur, that they are exceptions rather than examples. Respectability in the world is commonly based on those moral feelings and habits which the Bible inculcates; and in ninety-nine cases of one hundred, experience would testify that these have been moulded in early life, and entrusted with a powerful influence over the destinies succeeding manhood and age. But there is another result still more important, which a timely instruction of children in the sacred Scriptures may secure. I do not mean the impulse which it communicates to philanthropy. I do not refer to the projects which it has incipiently devised for relieving indigence, and suffering, and want. I do not point you to Howard, and Reynolds, and McIntosh, whom it sent on their errands of missionary mercy. It has an aim higher even than that. It aspires to the ultimate triumph of leading the heart to personal and practical piety. Such appears to have been its animating and glorious result in the case of Timothy, to which our text refers. The exertions of maternal kindness were rewarded-the prayers of an affectionate mother and grandmother were heard; and the plant which they reared with so much assiduity and tenderness, rose at last into a mighty tree, beneath whose shade the Church of Christ for half a century found repose, refreshment, and strength. It is not said, for it is not meant, that a saving knowledge of religion is a necessary consequence of a pious education; but certain we are, that this is one of the most powerful auxiliaries which human solicitude can consult. If there be, as there undoubtedly is, a striking analogy between the kingdoms of Providence and Grace, who can safely assert that a suitable perseverance in the appointed means is unsuccessful in the one case more frequently than in the other? But, at any rate, to those who have the Bible in their hands, there can be no Christian hope, except on the conditions which it has delineated. By imbuing the minds of children, therefore, with religious truth, we place them, if I may say so, upon the theatre of Divine grace; we give them the Scriptures to shelter them from the temptations of the world; and, above all, we multiply the rational probabilities, that they will, one day, be bathed in the blood of a Saviour, and prepared for the king. dom of their Father and their God.

Such, my hearers, are some of the leading considerations suggested by the text. You are aware how closely they apply to the subject which I am appointed, on the present occasion, to propose to the patronage of this community. Indeed, the design of the Sunday School Society, for which your assistance is now solicited, has been kept in view during all the remarks you have just heard; and I know not, that it could better be expressed in a single sentence, than by saying, in allusion to the text, that it is to give to men from their childhood a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. Since the first formation of Sunday Schools, they have had but one great object, and that has been to devote a portion of the Sabbath to the instruction of children in the elementary and acknowledged principles of the Bible. They keep aloof from all creeds-all sectarian distinctions -all controverted topics; and aiming simply at the good of society, and the welfare of souls, they wish, like the Saviour of the world, to take little children in their arms, and to bless them for this life, and that which is to come. The first of these institutions originated in the benevolence of a citizen of Gloucester, in England. His name was Robert Raikes. In 1782, his attention was arrested by the idleness and vice exhibited among the children of that city on the Sabbath. Prompted by a princely heart, he hired four female teachers, in different streets, to instruct these rep