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can hardly be expected to produce its full and designed effect in the amelioration of societies through most of the individuals composing these; could it be exhibited as such in its completest and most attractive light. And I think it will then, primarily at least, be exhibited as a storehouse and divine treasury of magnificent moral precepts, and a rich source of pure and pleasing, practically illustrative, incidents of thorough absorption and assimilation of itself by which, the soul can alone arrive at the degree of elevation, expansion, and purity, necessary to the full enjoyment of the highest of its existence, until the achieverment of its most exalted destinies. And I think with deep religious faith that it is a thing more to strike the heart than the head; that it consists in a warm and heartfelt conviction that the right and the good is absolutely and essentially God’s own cause; that the practice of it is the adoption, the advocacy, the furtherance of that cause, and as such to be relied on under all conceivable circumstances, without regard to any possible consequences of such a course; and that in the entire subjugation, the complete conquest, of all merely selfish, narrow concerns, that Christianity is the unrivalled picture and glowing type of this right and good in its highest phase, both in feeling and in action—of this reliance and this resignation carried to its extreme sublimity and that it is the highest object of a man’s whole nature to strive after this sublimity of character, to be absorbed in perpetual union with his will. And its proof will then be sought mostly in this internal evidence, which is addressed to the whole soul of the individual, and is not merely a matter of technical or logical demonstration or argument; and the power of producing it will often depend on the latter as when impressed in the first instance vividly upon the form. The soundness of faith will then be tested by expansion of feeling, by generosity and fervour by the conduct it inspires; it will be recognised in the habitual exercise of the Christian virtues in the performance of all ennobling, elevating, and kindly duties. The longer will these be found to expand the heart, the deeper and more intense will be the love to difficult precepts and subtle distinctions of the reasoning faculty, balanced on pledges of argumentation; to any metaphysics, however, or to any systematic course. Rather the mind is to be led to the truth, to the practice and cultivation of Christianity as religion, and the teaching of its dogmas—teaching, then it is undeniable that religious instruction were to be given without denominational bias, or without any bias may be brought to bear upon the susceptible mind of the youth without any allusion to distinctive doctrines, they possibly without reference to any of the distinctive truths of Christianity, in which alone such doctrines are intelligible and turned to any, in which, but the outlines and brilliant emanations of the precepts of natural religion, which Bishop Butler, a high authority, calls the “Foundation and principal part of Christiarity.” Nor do I think that the advantages, if any, to be derived from making the inculcation of the positive precepts primary, are any way a compensation for the evils incidental to sectarianism, opposed as the latter is to the humility, the universal charity, the boundless, less comprehensiveness of soul, inherent in spiritual Christianity.

But, at all events, it must surely be allowed that to teach what has just been stated involves religious teaching sufficient for children. Especially when it is considered that what is most desirable in this education is undoubtedly to give them such a foundation and bias towards virtue as may ever afterwards be least liable to be changed or eradicated. To instil such sparks of love for the good and the highest good as will have most chance of remaining for ever inextinguishable. And to effect this, it will be necessary to make the bias and the love distinctive; to instil the broad, vital, fundamental truths of Christianity, not as mere dry and empty abstractions, not as mere conceptions secondary and subservient only to an inferior degree, dependent on deductions of the reasoning faculty. But this must necessarily be done at the earliest and tenderest age. And it is not by instilling the positive precepts of Christianity that is to be done; certainly not so effectually nor so thoroughly imbuing them with the moral. Indeed, during any period for which children would be likely to attend national schools, indeed the junior principles, and especially the distinctive differences of sectarianism, would be unintelligible to them. And I believe that nothing tends more to produce in after years a distaste for all religion, than the wariness and disgust the infant mind undergoes in the forced study of the books in which such tenets are generally taught, and which exercise, at best, the memory mainly. True, it is a great thing to get the youthful mind thoroughly imbued with practical lessons of Christian kindness of life, and habits of reflection on these. And while these should be taught as based upon the broad moral principles of Christianity, it does seem that the time is not ripe for instilling the distinctive tenets of a distinct form of religion by the numerous interpretations of its positive creeds, to fix them with instruction in the historical subtleties and disputable conclusions by which those tenets are distinguished one from this other.

To this view I believe the majority of the laity and the majority and invariably tend the humility end invariably tend... I believe, therefore, that sectarian education, as necessarily opposed to these, can only lead to dissension and discord, and cannot be considered as clothed with that character of plainness which any creed so to be deliberately introduced into a system ought to possess.

It will be urged, or perhaps supposed, that such Christianity without dogmas, or even without distinctive dogmas will be most willingly and effectively taught by the professors and advocates of free-thinkers, and in some cases conflicting theories. Grasping the sur-