Neither the might of armies, nor the scheming of politicians, avails any thing against this power. The school-master, as we have already hinted, is the grand engine for revolutionizing a world. Let knowledge be generally diffused, and the fear of God be kept in the back-ground, and you have done the same for a country as if you had laid the gunpowder under its every institution; there needs only the igniting of a match, and the land shall be strewed with the fragments of all that is glorious and venerable. But, nevertheless, we would not have knowledge chained up in the college and monastery, because its arm is endowed with such sinew and nerve. We would not put forth a finger to uphold a system which we believed based on the ignorance of a population. We only desire to see knowledge of God advance as the vanguard of the host of information. We are sure that an intellectual must be a mighty peasantry. But we are equally sure that an intellectual, and a godless, will demonstrate their might, by the ease with which they crush whatever most adorns and elevates a kingdom. And in speaking to you individually of your duties as parents, we would bring into the family-circle the principles thus announced as applicable to the national. We want not to set bounds to the amount of knowledge which you strive to impart. But never let this remembrance be swept from your minds, that, to give a child knowledge without endeavouring, at the same time, to add to knowledge godliness, is

to do your best to throw the momentum of the giant into the arm of the idiot; to construct a machinery which may help to move a world, and to leave out the spring which would insure its moving it only towards God. We would have you shun, even as you would the tampering with an immortality deposited in your keeping, the imitating what goes on in a thousand of the households of a professedly Christian neighbourhood-the children can pronounce well, and they can step well, and they can play well; the mother proudly exhibits the specimens of proficiency in painting, and the father dwells, with an air of delight, on the progress made in Virgil and Homer-but if you inquire how far these parents are providing for their own in the things of eternity, why, the children have perhaps learned the Church catechism, and they read a chapter occasionally on a Sunday afternoon. And that ye may avoid the mistake into which, as we think, the temper of the times is but too likely to lead you, we would have you learn, from the subject which has now been discussed, that, in educating your children for the next life, you best educate them for the present. We give it you, as a truth, made known to us by God, and, at the same time, demonstrable by reason, that, in going through the courses of Bible-instruction, there is better mental discipline, whether for a child or an adult, than in any of the cleverly-devised methods for opening and strengthening the faculties. We say not that

the study of Scripture should exclude other studies, or be substituted for them. Natural philosophy is not to be learned from Scripture, nor general history; and we would not have such matters neglected. But we say that Scriptural study should be, at once, the ground-work and companion of every other; and that the mind will advance, with the firmest and most dominant step, into the various departments of knowledge, when familiarized with the truths of revelation, and accustomed to walk their unlimited spreadings. If parents had no higher ambition than to make their children intellectual, they would act most shrewdly by acting as though desirous to make their children religious. It is thus we apply our subject to those amongst you who are parents or guardians. But it applies to all. We call upon you all to observe that, in place of being beneath the notice of the intellectual, the Bible is the great nourisher of intellect. We require of you to bear away to your homes as an undeniable fact, that to care for the soul is to cultivate the mind. We will not yield the culture of the understanding to earthly husbandThere are heavenly ministers who water it with a choicer dew, and pour on it the beams of a more brilliant sun, and prune its branches with a kinder and more skilful hand. We will not give up reason to stand always as a priestess at the altars of human philosophy. She hath a more majestic temple to tread, and more beauteous robes wherein to walk, and incense rarer and more fragrant to

men.

burn in golden censers. She does well when exploring boldly God's visible works. She does better, when she meekly submits to spiritual teaching, and sits, as a child, at the Saviour's feet; for then shall she experience the truth, that "the entrance of God's words giveth light and understanding." And, therefore, be And, therefore, be ye heedful-the young amongst you more especially-that ye be not ashamed of piety as though it argued a feeble capacity. Rather be assured, forasmuch as revelation is the great strengthener of reason, that the march of mind which leaves the Bible in the rear is an advance, like that of our first parents in Paradise, towards knowledge, but, at the same time, towards death.

SERMON VIII.

THE PROVISION MADE BY GOD FOR THE POOR.

PSALM 1xviii. 10.

"Thou, O God, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor."

We think it one of the most remarkable sayings of Holy Writ that “the poor shall never cease out of the land." The words may be regarded as a prophecy, and their fulfilment has been every way most surprising. Amid all the revolutions whereof our earth has been the scene, revolutions which have presented to us empire after empire rising to the summit of greatness, and gathering into its provinces the wealth of the world, there has never been a nation over which riches have been equally diffused. The many have had poverty for their portion, whilst abundance has been poured into the laps of the few. And if you refuse to consider this as a divine appointment, it will be hard, we think, to account for the phenomenon. It might have been expected that the distribution of physical comfort would be proportioned to the amount of physical strength; so that