"smooth things?" Because I would exhort you, dear brethren, to be patient towards them as towards all men, do I therefore desire you to give them just cause to infer that your patience towards error is indifference to truth? God forbid that either you or I should ever hesitate to "open our mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel," whatever offence it may occasion to those who cannot, or will not, or dare not, receive it.

5. Very erroneous notions are entertained by some as to the legitimate limits of religious controversy; and such persons claim for themselves the right of putting a gag in the mouth of their opponents whenever they advance any truth-however obviously warranted by Holy Scripture, which militates against their own peculiar views-however manifestly opposed to it. The controversial discourses which are, in my judgment, unfit for an hospital are, abstruse discussions on the hidden or but partially revealed things of God; such as are purely scholastic; or such as are simply ceremonial. These, and such as these, can be of very little edification to the poor patients; and the chaplain is not present there to speak of them. Legitimate religious controversy must indeed be always founded on some positive revelation in Holy Scripture, some men reading that revelation in one way, and some in another; but surely there can be no legitimate controversy as to the "One Mediator between God and man," or that "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved but only the name of the Lord Jesus Christ;" and he who plainly preaches these and similar truths to the sick and dying, is not a controversialist, but a preacher of righteousness.

6. No man, then, has a right to be offended with the chaplain who speaks faithfully on these things; and most assuredly Christ will be offended at his minister if he dare to keep them back. If, for instance, a Romanist is vexed because the officiating clergyman publishes that salvation can be obtained only through Christ, while he has been taught by some blind leader of the blind that God will give His honour to another, and that the Virgin Mary is an efficacious and a more ready mediator than her ever blessed Son; is this to indulge in religious controversy? 'Oμoλoyovμévws, confessedly, incontrovertibly, manifestly to all who will search the Scriptures, Christ is the only Mediator; and if the Romanists will not hear, and if they will not lay it to heart to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of Hosts, I will even send a curse upon them, and I will curse their blessings; yea, I have cursed them already because they do not lay it to heart. Such unhappy persons are, alas! already condemned by the just judgment of Him whom they will not have to reign over them with undivided empire: and you would be a partaker of their sins, and of the consequence of their sins, if, out of fear of giving offence, you scrupled to declare in their presence this whole counsel of God.

This is, however, a widely different thing from turning into ridicule their unhappy blindness, or from making it the subject of uncharitable animadversions. It belongs rather to that chastisement of love which, although for "the present it may be grievous, afterwards yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." For my own part, whenever I have preached in an hospital, I have studiously avoided any allusion to the miserable errors of Romanism; but I have as studiously brought forward, plainly and prominently forward, the grand saving truths of the Gospel. I have not told them that they cannot be saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary or of the Saints, but I have always told them that it is impossible for sinners to be saved except by Christ, and this is the kind of preaching which, as it seems to me, is alone suited to the bed of sickness and death, be it in an hospital or a palace.

7. What shall I say then, how shall I express my deep grief, my horror, at the following request preferred to Government, by one sent out to watch over those who profess to "watch for souls as they that must give account?" The Right Reverend Dr. Fennelly has solicited that our chaplains be authoritatively

limited in their public ministrations in our hospitals "to the preaching of what is more suited to hospital patients, a good moral discourse!" This minister of Christ wishes you to be compelled to preach a good moral discourse to the sick, and, it may well be, the dying: to those, the larger portion of whom their own follies and vices have most probably brought to that place, and from whence some may very shortly be carried out to their graves. Instead of teaching these poor fellow-sinners to wash their bed and to water their couch with their tears; or instead of comforting them with the blessed assurance, on our Master's authority, that God, who has rebuked them in his indignation and chastened them in His displeasure, will hear the voice of their weeping and receive their prayer, if offered in the name and for the sake of the sinner's only Saviour, they are to be mocked with a "good moral discourse," as most appropriate to a hospital!

8. We presume not to judge others; to their own Master they stand or fall; but assuredly we shall be anathema, dear brethren, cursed of God and of many perished souls, if we preach anything anywhere, and more especially at a death-bed, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection, and the Life.

I am, as always, your affectionate bishop and fellow-labourer,

(Signed)
(A true copy)

G. T. MADRAS.

FREDERICK ORME, Registrar.

EDUCATION OF THE POOR IN IRELAND.

WE, the undersigned prelates of the United Church of England and Ireland, have judged it to be our duty, upon some former occasions, to address those members of the church who are directly committed to our care and government, and all others who are disposed to look to us for counsel and support, concerning the question of the education of the poor in Ireland. And as there are various particulars in the actual state of that question, which appear to make a similar address from us peculiarly needful at the present time, we proceed once more to the discharge of this anxious, and in some respects painful, though, as we cannot but feel, clear and most important duty, in humble reliance upon the guidance and blessing of Almighty God.

Upon the former occasions to which we have referred, we felt constrained to make known the very unfavourable judgment which we had formed of the national system of education for this country, distinctly declaring that we could not approve of it, or assist in the management of it, or recommend to the patrons or superintendents of schools that they should place them in connexion with it.

It was with much reluctance and regret that we felt ourselves obliged to declare so decidedly and publicly against a plan of education established and maintained by the state, to which we owe, and are ready to render, all duty not interfering with that which we owe to God. But this higher duty compelled us to express thus plainly and strongly our disapprobation and distrust of this system; and we lament that it does not now permit us to retract, or to soften those declarations of our opinion. We consider it to be the more necessary to state this explicitly, because it is conceived by some persons that certain modifications of its rules, from time to time introduced by the Commissioners of National Education, have done much to remove the objections, on which it has been from the beginning opposed and rejected by the greater portion of the members of the established church. And as we are unable to form the same opinion of these changes, we deem it our duty to obviate the misapprehension to which our silence might give rise, by stating distinctly that we cannot discern in them any sufficient reasons for withdrawing or qualifying the condemnation which we have deliberately and repeatedly pronounced.

When the Government first announced its determination that this system should supersede those to which the state had before given support, it was very generally opposed by the clergy and the laity of our church. The grounds on which this opposition was made to rest were various. The undue prominence given to secular, to the depreciation of religious instruction; the disre gard shewn to the position and claims of the clergy of the established church, tending to throw the direction of national education into the hands of the priesthood of the church of Rome; and other defects and evils, both of the system itself and of the machinery by which it was to be worked, were urged as grave objections against the proposed plan of education. While its opponents differed as to the importance which was to be assigned to some of these objections, there was one upon the paramount importance of which all were agreed. The rule by which the Holy Scriptures were to be excluded from the schools during the hours of general instruction, was treated by all as so fundamentally objectionable, that while this should continue to be the principle of the system, they could not conscientiously connect their schools with it, even though all the other grounds of opposition were taken away.

In the former societies for the education of the poor, with which the clergy were connected, they had, in accommodation to the unhappy divisions of this country, consented to forbear from any attempt to teach the formularies of our church to the children of dissenters, Protestant or Roman catholic, who attended the schools of which they had the superintendence. But they did not judge themselves at liberty so to deal with the word of God. There was in every school a bible-class, and in every school to read the bible was a part of the daily business; and all the children in attendance, of whatever religious communion, took their places in this class as soon as their proficiency enabled them to profit by the reading of the Holy Scriptures. But the distinction of the new system was, that it placed the bible under the same rule with books of peculiar instruction in religion, and excluded it, with them, from the hours of general education. And, moreover, this great change was, avowedly, made as a concession to the unlawful authority by which the church of Rome withholds the Holy Scriptures from its members.

It should not have been expected that the clergy of our church, who are bound by obligations so sacred to resist the spiritual tyranny and to oppose the errors of the church of Rome, would join in a system of education, of which the distinctive claim to acceptance and support was the aid which it gave to one of the most violent exercises of this tyranny, that which is, in fact, the strength and protection of its worst errors. It was not merely a question of the amount of good which was to be done by retaining the Bible in its proper place in the education of the poor-though it would have been painful to give up this means of doing so much good to the Roman-catholic children, to whom (commended as they are in so many ways to their sympathies) the clergy in general have the power of doing so little; but there was a still graver question of the amount of evil which would result from the change, and the part which the clergy were to take in effecting it. The principle of " the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures," as it is maintained by our church, is a fundamental principle of the most momentous importance. It is by means of it that truth has been guarded and handed down to us by those who have gone before us. And it is by means of it we are to preserve this deposit of truth, and to defend and transmit it, pure and unmutilated, to those who are to come after us. While, on the other hand, it is by rejecting this principle that the church of Rome is able to retain and to defend its errors, its superstitions, and its usurpations. It is well known that our church exacts from all its ministers an express declaration of their belief of this great doctrine, and a solemn promise that they will regulate their ministrations in conformity with it. And the steady maintenance of it is still further bound upon our clergy, when they are, by God's Providence, placed in circumstances in

which they have to carry on a continual contest for the truth, not merely for the deliverance of those who are in error, but for the preservation of those who are more immediately committed to their care, and in which it is plain that their prospect of success in either object depends altogether upon their adherence to this principle, and that, when it is in any degree allowed to become obscure or doubtful, in the same degree the cause of truth is weakened, and that of error strengthened in the land. And they could not doubt that if they connected their schools with the national system, and thereby entered into a compact to dispossess the Bible of the place which it had hitherto occupied in them, they would be in the eyes of the young and of the old of both communions, practically admitting the false principles of the church of Rome, and submitting to its tyranny, and abandoning the great principle of their own church, concerning the sufficiency and supremacy of God's Holy Word.

It would seem that the board to which the management of national education is committed, has not been insensible to the force of this grand and primary objection. It changed the offensive, but true ground, on which the exclusion of the Scriptures from its schools was originally placed, for another, which was much more specious and popular; and parental authority was brought in to occupy the post at first assigned to the authority of the church of Rome. Those who were acquainted with the state of the country, knew that there was no real objection on the part of Roman-catholic parents, speaking generally, to read the Bible themselves, or have it read by their children, but the contrary. And, in fact, when ecclesiastical authority was first exerted to put down scriptural education in this country, it had to encounter very stubborn resistance from parental authority-a resistance which, undoubtedly, would have been successful, if it had been aided, as it ought to have been, by the state. But a renewal of this struggle was not to be looked for. For, however true it be that Roman catholics in general would prefer that their children were taught the Bible, this desire is seldom so enlightened or so strong as of itself to arouse them to a contest with the authorities of their church. Under former systems they resisted the despotic power which forbad their children to read the Bible, chiefly because their submission to it would have involved the loss of an improved method of secular education. But when, in consequence of the establishment of the national system, no such loss would ensue, it was not to be expected that any considerable number would persist in opposing the mandates of their clergy, or that the latter would find any difficulty in constraining the parents, from whom they were able to withhold the Bible, to forbid the use of it to their children. This being the case, it must be felt that, under all the modifications which have taken place in the rules, the matter remained in substance and fact unaltered; and that the parental authority, which is put forward so prominently, is really the authority of the church of Rome, exercised on and through the parents of the children.

It is still further to be considered, that parental authority, like civil and ecclesiastical, and all other lawful authority, derives all its force from the authority of God; and therefore can possess none, when it is exerted in opposition to the divine authority on which it rests. And, although a child, who, from tender years or false training, is unable to see clearly the opposition which may exist between his parent's will and the will of God, or to apprehend its effects in releasing him from the duty of submission, is not to be instructed or encouraged to resist the authority of his parent, even when it is unlawfully exerted. Yet that parent has no right to require others, who clearly perceive this opposition, and understand its effects, to be his instruments in enforcing an unlawful exercise of his authority over his child; and others have no warrant to become his instruments in such a case. The distinction is obvious. Our clergy would and ought to abstain from any direct efforts to excite resistance, or even to encourage it, on the part of a child,

until they had good ground for regarding that resistance as intelligent and conscientious. But they could not recognise such an exertion of parental authority, as if it were lawful, and lend their assistance in enforcing it. So that, even if it were voluntarily exerted in forbidding the Bible to be read, our clergy could not consent to bind themselves to aid in giving effect to such an unlawful command. But when they regard the parent as himself in bondage to the usurped authority of the church of Rome, and as not exercising his own free will, but obeying as a passive agent, in binding the same yoke upon his children, the duty of refusing to co-operate with him is still clearer. The clergy may be able to do but little towards delivering their Roman-catholic countrymen from such bondage, but they can at least keep themselves free from the guilt of becoming instruments in rivetting its chains upon them; and this, accordingly, they resolved to do; in which resolution, as in all that they have done in this matter, they had the full concurrence and support of the lay members of the church.

The exclusive appropriation of the parliamentary grants for education having left the church destitute of its accustomed aids for the instruction of the children of the poor, the clergy and laity, to supply the want which had been thus created, united in forming the Church Education Society for Ireland. The immediate and chief object of this society is to afford the means of religious education to the poorer children of our own communion. But an earnest desire being felt to extend the benefits of the schools to other communions also, not only is the freest access given to all, but everything is done, which can be done consistently with principle, to take away every hindrance to their availing themselves of the advantages which they afford. While the reading of the Bible forms a portion of the business of the schools, in which all children, when qualified, are expected to take a part, the formularies of the church are required to be learned by none except the children of its own members. And although the attendance of Roman-catholic children at the Schools of the Church Education Society fluctuates considerably, as ecclesiastical authority is more or less actively exerted to restrain it, yet, on the whole, there appears no room to doubt that united education has been effected in a much higher degree in the schools of this society than in those of the National Board.

The very limited resources of the society, however, being inadequate to the full attainment of its objects, diocesan and other petitions were presented to Parliament, praying for such a revision of the question of education in this country as might allow the established church to share in the funds appropriated to the education of the poor. These petitions having been unsuccess ful, the operations and the wants of the Church Education Society were in the same way brought before the legislature, with the view of obtaining a separate grant for the maintenance of its schools. And afterwards, an application was made to the government, soliciting that the Irish part of the united church might be allowed to participate with the English in the grant of money from which the latter annually draws support for a system of education in conformity with its own principles. These appeals have been hitherto unsuccessful; but we cannot bring ourselves to think it possible that the striking inequality of the measure which has been dealt towards the established church of this country in the important concern of education, and the great hardship of the position in which it has been thereby placed, can fail ultimately to attract towards it such fair consideration as may procure for it due sympathy and redress. We, on the contrary, entertain a confident hope that, whatever be the hindrances which have hitherto obstructed that fair consideration, they are but temporary, and that they will pass away, leaving the government free to afford the assistance which is so greatly needed by the Church Education Society, and to which its objects and its circumstances give it so strong a claim,