were extended further than it is, there would be no, necessity for saying that those who, from their very situation in life, have less advantages than others, should be admitted earlier to the solemn rite of Confirmation. There fore, as entrusted with the administration of the great ordinance which occupies so very large a portion of the time of the Bishop of this diocese, I, for one, could never consent that there should be any diminution of our efforts to keep alive the system of Sunday schools. There is another portion of my duty in which the efficacy of Sunday schools is manifestly proved. When a young man comes for ordination, in those preliminary conversations which pass between the bishop and the candidate, one question which is, I believe, always asked is, whether he has had any opportunity of teaching in a Sunday school. I feel, as I believe every bishop feels, that if it is a Sunday school teacher whom I have to deal with in regard to ordination, I have a person before me who is not altogether untrained for the difficult duties on which, at an early age, he is entering ; and I always consider it a good sign in the candidate for ordination, and feel a satisfaction in admitting him to the more arduous duties of the same kind which his ordination opens up, when I have the assurance that he has assisted a worthy pastor, under whom he bas lived, by instructing the children of the poor, and that, therefore, speaking to men respecting their souls will not be altogether new to him. I went the other day to Cambridge, and there visited the Jesus Lane Sunday school. I believe there is no bishop who is not acquainted with that school. You have there a great association of undergraduates in the University who unite themselves together, and have done so for many years, to teach the children of the poor. The Sunday schools are under the management of the young men themselves, and untold blessings have been derived by young men preparing for ordination from their work in that Institution. When a young man goes to college, and the restraints of home or of school are removed, one of the greatest helps to a religious life that he can have during his three years of trial at the Universi ty is to be associated in some religious work with the religious young men around him; and these Sunday schools at Cambridge have now been blessed of God for many years to be a practical training for the work of the ministry to many young men who, in after life, have done good service to their Master's cause. I feel, therefore, that I cannot, in the office which I hold, hesitate to bear my testimony to the good effects of Sunday school teaching, and its absolute necessity if these two departments of the Bishop's office are to be well brought to accomplishmentthat which has to do with confirmation, and that which has to do with the ordination of young pastors in Christ's Church. Now, quite independently of the peculiar thoughts which may suggest themselves to the mind of a Bishop, I should have thought that the progress which has been made in secular education in this country during the last twenty years had rather made Sunday schools more, than less, necessary than they were previously. In the first place, if you are going to impart to the young a great deal of secular education, it would certainly be a great mistake to allow their religious education to lag behind. But, then, it may be said that this religious education is communicated in the day-school by the master or mistress of the school. I am thankful to say that a great deal of it is; I am thankful to say that in all our schools a great deal of religious knowledge is communicated; and I rejoice to believe that no system of education is likely ever to be popular in this country which does not make religious knowledge go hand in hand with secular knowledge. But, then, my experience in this matter teaches me also, that whilst it is perfectly easy to give in a day-school a great deal of religious knowledge, it is not easy to make the lessons about religion really religious. The great difficulty, which I think every man who has had experience in schoolkeeping or school teaching will admit to exist is, that, while you may easily read the Scriptures, and give children a great familiarity, not only with the history and geography, but even with the doctrines contained in the Scriptures, it is not very easy to make the common work of the day-school that sort of process which we wish to make it, and whereby we shall actually reach the child's soul. We desire to be able to speak to the children in such language as will touch their hearts and consciences; and, though we have no doubt reason to hope that yearly the number of our religious schoolmasters and schoolmistresses will increase, and that yearly, more and more, the instruction about religion will become really religious, yet the Sunday-school certainly does afford a more direct opportunity for making appeals to the heart and conscience than the ordinary instruction of the day-school. I can conceive nothing more alarming than that we should communicate a great deal of knowledge about religion, and yet not make the children with whom we are dealing religious. If it is a bad thing to separate between secular and religious knowledge, it is a worse thing to separate between the knowledge of religion and religion in the heart; and no man is in a more disadvantageous position than he to whom all the truths of religion are familiar as mere matters of knowledge, and in whose case there has not, by the blessing of God's Spirit, been an entrance gained for these truths into the heart. The man who has never heard of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour, when he hears of it first, is greatly touched by it; but he who has known all about it from his earliest childhood, if it has never made any impression upon his heart, is the most difficult man in the world to influence. And, therefore, I say that, as our secular instruction requires religious instruction to go hand in hand with it, so does our communication of ordinary religious knowledge require that sort of spiritual intercourse which the Sunday school affords an opportunity of cherishing between the teacher and the taught. I think the objection mentioned in the Report, that Sunday schools make people go to a place of worship, is the most extraordinary objection I ever heard of. I should have thought it was the strongest possible recommendation of the system, that people who go to Sunday schools are thereby induced to attend Church or Chapel. I am sure, for my own part, I am very glad to hear of it, and I hope that will continue to be a characteristic of Sunday school teaching to the end of the world. Why, what in the world do Sunday schools exist for, except to make people more religious; and how are people to be more religious, and yet not show their religion by going either to Church or Chapel? The word "Sectarian," is introduced in the Report; it is there stated to be an objection to the Sunday school system, that it has "a sectarian tendency." I presume that by that is meant, that it tends to make men attach themselves to one section of Christians, and not to Christianity in the abstract. Now, I have no great faith in Christianity in the abstract. True Christianity will generally show itself in adhesion to one or other of those exist ing forms of religion which have wound themselves round men's hearts through the associations of centuries; and I believe it is a very great blessing, that Sunday school teaching does lead young people to frequent the house of God. I will make only one or two more remarks. One is, that I cannot conceive any parish being at all well administered without a Sunday school. I cannot conceive how there can be that union running through the whole parish, which is the very essence of the good working of the parochial system without a Sunday school. What is it that is to bring children and their parents, and the young people of the upper classes, and men hard-worked during the week, but who can spare some time on the Lord's Day-what is it that is to bring them altogether, to unite them in one common work, except union in the Sunday school? I am quite sure that those who have observed how young persons of the upper classes have been interested in their teaching in the Sunday school, what good it has done to their own souls, how it has brought them into intimate relations with the poor and with their pastors, will allow that if our parishes are to have a real union, extending through all ranks and all ages, there is hardly any means by which we can keep up this union except the Sunday school. The other remark which I would make is this, that I think it is a matter for serious consideration to the busy part of our population, whether it be not their especial duty to have to do with Sunday schools. I have mentioned before, on public occasions, that I know two of the busiest men in England,-two men who hold almost the highest positions in the profession of the law,-each of whom has, for many years, spent a portion of his Sunday in teaching in his parish Sunday school. While the exigencies of business occupy them from early in the morning till late at night throughout the week, and the temptation is strong to spend Sunday in the country air, far away from the scenes of business and from the smoke and fatigue of town, they have thought it a sacred duty to remain in London on Sunday, that they might take part in the work of the parochial Sunday school. And what can be done by men who are oppressed with the greatest amount of professional labour, and whose names, if I were to mention them, would be recognised by every one as those of men at the very head of their profession, what can be done, I say, by them may be done by the busiest man in London. And there is no one who needs so much that sort of spiritual refreshment which the Sunday school gives as the man who is being busily engaged six days in the week in his ordinary secular avocations. The world is very apt to get such a hold on his heart, that he has little delight for things that are above the world. The more need is there, then, for him to prize every opportunity whereby the things of another life will be brought before him in their reality. And I know no way in which the reality of the things of another life may be better brought before a man than by his speaking to a little child as to his soul, and heaven, and the Lord Jesus. It is all very well to talk about the outside of religion, but when a man speaks to a little child whose very simplicity gives a sacredness to the deep things of religion, he must be a hypocrite indeed, if he does not feel in his heart what he is endeavouring to raise in the mind of the child. Thus to be brought face to face with an immortal soul, endeavouring to draw out what is good, and to lead that little child to the Lord and Saviour,the man who is in that position once every week will certainly go back to the common occupations of the law or of trade freshened; he will carry with him into his ordinary business something of that higher atmosphere into which he has been brought in the presence of that child. I believe men will find that they have more time for giving themselves to this occupation than they suppose if they will only make the trial. I am sure that they will never repent any sacrifice which they may make in this cause, and that God's blessing will attend the self-denial which leads the busy man to devote a portion of his Sunday to the instruction of the children of the poor. The Rev. DANIEL MOORE, M.A., said, My Christian friends, the resolution which I have been asked to submit to the meeting is as follows: "That the Report now read be In days like these, when so many debatable issues are raised on the subject of education, it is truly refreshing to find ourselves upon neutral ground, to find that there is one plot of the education field which we may occupy, without any interference, without any dread of privy council, revised codes, or re-revised codes, and in which we may pursue a course of honourable usefulness, no man forbidding us. Such a plot is the Sunday school, an institution which I never hesitate to rank foremost among the inventions of modern philanthrophy, and which must ever make the name of Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, first among those of Christian patriots. It is this institution which the Church of England Sunday School Institute was originated to defend, and to bring into a state of the greatest efficiency. Those who were engaged in Sunday schools many years ago know too well what we suffered for want of such an organisation as this. I can remember the time when, as Sunday school teachers, we had no such books as those which are now provided for our instruction in arranged classes. We had then to fall back upon such books as were supplied by the Sunday School Union; and I am quite sure that all of us remember that the books supplied by that Society, valuable as they were, because we had no better, contained many things which made it extremely inconvenient for Churchmen to adopt them. Books which were intended for the use of Sunday school teachers were framed upon the peculiarities of dissent; they ignored, if they did not contradict, some of the fundamental teaching of our Church. Hence there was, of necessity, a want of unity between the week-day and the Sunday school teaching, between what the children heard at school and what they heard at church; and some parts of the Assembly's Catechism, for example, were found to consort very inadequately with our formulas, our Creeds, and our Catechism. I, for one, therefore, rejoiced very greatly when this Institute was first established. I felt that it met a great want; I felt that it was likely to bring together Churchmen in Church schools; that it would probably cause us to act more upon a plan, more upon some recognised sys tem, instead of, as I know to have been the case before, all teachers being left to do exactly what was right in their own eyes, so that every school had a system of its own. I believe that this Institute has done very much in awakening clergymen themselves to a sense of the importance of the instrumentality which is within their reach, as a great auxiliary to the pastorate. I am afraid that most of us must plead guilty to the charge of not having used as we ought to have done this most beneficent appliance for influencing the minds of the people. By means of this Institute, however, there has been stirred up an eager and anxious spirit amongst the parochial clergy. They have mixed more with schools, mixed more with teachers; they have thrown themselves more heartily into the organisation of the school than they ever did before this Institute was formed. I do believe, our too, that the publications of the Institute have done much towards giving a higher tone to the teaching of our schools. They have enabled teachers to keep their ordinary Sunday instruction on a par with the teaching and the festivals of the Church, instead of continuing in that incoherent and unconnected mode of teaching which too commonly prevailed before this Institute was established. I feel, therefore, that we are greatly indebted to this institution, and I trust that my brethren around me will acknowledge that debt, if they have not done so already, by joining themselves to the Institute, causing its periodicals to be circulated among their teachers, and adopting its books in their schools. I, for one, have adopted the books almost from the very commencement, and I can testify to their usefulness. consider that excellent judgment and great discrimination were displayed in the compilation of the Hymn Book; and as regards the Litany, having for many years past used it almost every Sunday myself, I can testify to the awakened interest and sustained attention manifested by the children in giving the responses in that Litany-an interest and attention infinitely superior to those which I was enabled to maintain by means of the extempore prayer with which we previously commenced school. I do feel, therefore, that this Institute has very large claims on the sympathy and support of the parochial clergy. I I believe it has also strong claims to the sympathy and support of Christians generally. I listened with curiosity to the various forms of imaginary objections adverted to in the report against the system of Sundayschools generally. I am persuaded that if those objections represent the strength of the argument against Sunday schools, we have nothing to fear. It does seem to me to have been abun dantly proved to us by the Bishop of London, that in exact proportion as we find secular knowledge increasing, are we bound to give religious knowledge to the children of the poor: and I trust that the idea will take full possession of the minds of teachers and of the minds of clergy, that there must always be, and always should be, a divorce between the parochial teaching and Sunday school teaching. I have always desired that children should feel on the Sunday, not only that they are being instructed in different subjects, not only that they are being taught by different persons, but that they are under an entirely different plan of instruction on that day; that the economy of the Sunday school is altogether peculiar; and that, instead of feeling that they have a teacher set over them to whom they must of necessity look up as a superior, they should be enabled to feel that they have in their teacher an adviser and a friend. They see him sitting Sunday after Sunday the centre of a like circle of happy faces. He looks leniently on their mistakes; he tries to burden their minds as little as possible; he endeavours to excite their interest: he listens to the small details of their personal and family history; the whole scene is one where there may be an appeal to the conscience, an appeal to the affections, an appeal to those sensibilities and feelings, to which, from the very nature of the case, the national schoolmaster cannot possibly address himself. However far we may extend the national school system, we can never hope to supersede the necessity for that kind of teaching which is given by a kind and affectionate Sunday school teacher while engaged in a friendly intercourse with his pupils, as he sits with them once a week in the class. I will not, sir, knowing that there are friends to come after me who intend to address the teachers present, on points specially connected with their |