reason to apprehend from the corruption of our nature, the seduction of novelty, and the various arts resorted to by those, who make the press their instrument for subverting the faith, unsettling the principles, and destroying the happiness of their fellow-creatures, that we shall only increase the temptations of the poor by giving them new opportunities of mental dissipation; and that, while we shall not make any of them much wiser, we shall in all probability render several among them far more wicked.

To all this it might be easy to answer, that it is vain, and worse than vain, to argue against a great benefit because that benefit may be abused; and that there is no single blessing of the Almighty which may not be rendered a source of mischief by the folly and perverseness of His creatures. But, as nothing can be good, of which the probable evil exceeds the probable advantage, it may be more satisfactory to reply (and the reply is happily within our power) that,

1st. The incidental dangers of education are less on the whole, in themselves, and of far less probable occurrence than those which arise from a mind entirely unimproved, and from that lack of occupation, which, in every rank of life, must often be the effect of ignorance.

2dly. That those dangers, such as they are, are not peculiar to the educated man alone, but may exist even where education is most neglected.

And 3dly, That the education for which we contend is not confined to the gift of reading and

writing alone; but is precisely of that nature, which is best adapted to fortify the mind against the pollution of impure suggestion and the assaults of impious sophistry. Even if the worst should happen, I am not sure that the person, whom an unhappy course of reading seduces into infidelity, is in a more hopeless condition, so far as his soul is concerned, than the man who has scarcely learned the name of God at all, and certainly has never been taught to think of God with reverence and devotion; but I am sure that, for one half-educated deist, there are many hundreds of uneducated persons who, practically, and in the general habit of their lives are altogether without God in the world; and it is a question which the common sense of every man will find little difficulty in deciding, whether the possible danger of a few is to counterbalance the certain misery of a multitude.

But are we really so little informed of what is passing around us in this vast metropolis, and in all the other principal seats of a condensed population throughout the land, as to be ignorant, that for a man to receive lessons in profaneness, corruption, and disloyalty, it is by no means necessary that he should first have learned to read? Can we doubt that the ear is as apt a scholar as the eye for forbidden things, and for false and pestilential doctrines? Do we not perceive that the least informed, and most neglected districts of the empire have been those, in truth, where the evils of which we complain have sprung up in the most abundant harvest? Or can we hesitate to determine, that

the best and only prevention or remedy of education misapplied, and of gross and brutal ignorance, is such an education as inclines men to love what is good, and "trains up a child in the way in which we desire him to go," in the well-grounded confidence that, "when he is old, he will not depart from it 1."

Such an education it was, as I have described, (of which Christianity is the basis, salvation the object, and the words of Scripture and the rituals of our excellent Church the text-books and the manuals) which was alone contemplated by the wise and excellent men, whose zeal and munificence first adorned this city with those schools for which your continued patronage is now solicited. Such an education, (improved in its instrumental part by the application of that admirable system, the knowledge of which is, perhaps, the most illustrious tribute which the east has yet yielded to her conquerors) is that, in my opinion, which is at once best adapted to the nature and the wants of mankind, to the religious interests of a great majority of the English nation, to the stability of our civil and religious institutions, to the salvation of many souls, and to the extension and acceleration of that kingdom and triumph of our Lord, our Saviour and our God, in the expectation of which "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together "."

There have been those-there still, perhaps, are some (may the Almighty turn their hearts and

1 Prov. xxii. 6.

2 Romans viii. 22.

help their understandings!) who have held up the English Church as hostile to general education, as anxious to impede the march of a power which she viewed with jealousy, and as secretly grudging to the poor that light, which it was her peculiar duty to dispense to them. To such calumnies-unfounded at all times, but never more untrue than at the time when it was urged with greatest confidence and bitterness,-the noble spectacle now before you is in itself a sufficient answer. The effect of that spectacle I will not weaken by any observations on it, but I will content myself with reminding you that, how often and to what extent it shall be renewed, how many generations more may receive from these institutions the seeds of light, the habits of virtue, and the hope of immortality, must depend on you and on your bounty. Over the destinies of these innocent creatures now before you; over the destinies of those many thousands more whom even this vast fabric could not contain, but who, like these, are receiving their education in our schools, and of whom these are but the representatives; over the destinies of the generations yet unborn, who may hereafter share in the blessings which these schools supply; over the destinies of that Church, in whose principles they have been thus far carefully instructed; over the destinies of the nation itself, which can only be powerful or happy through the means of an industrious and intelligent, a holy and a happy population; over all these, this day, a strange and ample power is given you.

Is it your pleasure that these things should flourish, or that they should fall? I cannot doubt which way your desires tend: let but your conduct be answerable, and, by the blessing of God, those desires shall receive their sure accomplish

ment.

One observation more, and I have done. If we behold with interest and emotion the spectacle of so many immortal spirits assembled in the temple of the Lord, and receiving, as heirs of immortality, the blessings of religious instruction through His word and by His ministers; let us remember that they are not the young and ignorant alone who have souls to be saved, and opportunities of grace to answer for that, if it be desirable for the poor to receive the knowledge of Christ, for the rich to neglect that knowledge can be neither wise, nor safe, nor holy; and that if it be charity to build an ark for our neighbour, it is madness not to enter into it ourselves.

Let, then, your own practice be such as may show you to be in earnest in that anxiety, which you express for the improvement of your fellowcreatures; and, that your religion may be genuine and consistent, let not your prayers be confined to this place alone, but, in the solitude of your closets, and in the circles of your families, no less than in the sanctuary and before the altar of the Most High, call down the blessing of the Holy Ghost on the instructions here afforded, and the benefactions here bestowed, in His name and through His me