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roof, or within the same town. But this is but a poor reason for union of heart or feeling, although it is great reason for showing kindness and civility. If we think of what is more than a mere accident; if we look upon each other as companions in a better sense, that is, as having a common work and a common interest, then it becomes us to consider well what this work is, and what this interest. it to help one another in evil or in good? Is it to assist one another in maintaining the liberty to do what is base or wicked, to live in idleness, to get in debt, to be thoughtless, extravagant, or sensual? If this is the work for which we are companions, then, indeed, it is a companionship which the language of the text will best describe. They who are led into it, and they who lead them, become the children of hell together.

But surely we are companions in a better sense than this, and with a companionship wherein Christ himself may be one. There is before you a common work and a common interest, in which you may be fellow-workers with Christ, and fellowreapers; sharers of his labour, and sharers of his glory. There is a common work to which you are all leagued, that the society to which you belong should be in reality what it is in name, a school of Christian education; there is a common interest, that all evil should be put away from among you, inasmuch as it hinders you each and all in follow

ing Christ steadily. This is a true companionship, a Christian communion, in which there is ample room for the exercise of all, and far more than all, the good points which can ever exist in those evil communions, for good nature, for mutual kindness, for preferring each the other and the welfare of the whole to his own; but which admits of nothing narrow-minded, nothing contentious, nothing which is a breach of our true and heavenly communion, nothing which leads us to excuse, to endure, to become accomplices with evil. For in this true companionship, whatever is against Christ is also against our union: we are no less false to one another than to him, if we do not endeavour to put it down. And to bring over any to such a companionship is no less than to fulfil Christ's command, while we effectually avoid incurring the danger of his warning. It is conversion, not proselytism; and as in the spirit of human proselytism both are accursed together, he that proselytizes and he who is proselytized: so, in this true conversion to the companionship of Christ, he who is converted has saved his soul, and he who has converted him, shall shine as the stars for ever and

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SERMON XVI.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

[PREACHED IN RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL, ON THE FOUNDER'S COMMEMORATION.]

DEUTERONOMY, xi. 19.

Ye shall teach these my words unto your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

THIS is the simplest notion of education; for, undoubtedly, he is perfectly educated who is taught all the will of God concerning him, and enabled, through life, to execute it. And he is not well educated who does not know the will of God, or knowing it, has received no help in his education towards being inclined and enabled to do it.

Stated in these words, I do not know that any one would much dispute the truth of this description. But when we come to unfold it, and try to arrive at an accurate knowledge of it in detail,

we find room for very great differences of opinion, such as have given birth to various controversies, and to many different systems in practice. These, of course, it is not my purpose to enter into; but it may not be amiss to show how a description, seemingly so simple, can lead to all these differences, and what it is which so often perplexes men's notions when they come to speak of education.

Now the origin of these disputes arises, in a great degree, from making a division such as we find in the prayers used in other places of education, and partly also in that one which is in daily use here; a division, namely, between “true religion" and "useful learning." For men's ideas of what is "true religion" being thus very much narrowed, the point in which all were agreed became greatly reduced, whilst a new and very important one was introduced, on which men might greatly differ. It was thought that the great and allowed end of education was sufficiently fulfilled by what was called teaching the Bible; that thus we should know God's will respecting us, and be also disposed to practise it. But here the study of the Bible being considered as synonymous with religious education," it followed, on the one hand, that all those things which were necessarily taught besides the Bible, in colleges and higher schools, were looked upon as distinct from religion; and, on the other hand, that they who held religious educa

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tion" to be all that was needed as a matter of necessity, taught, in schools for the poor, nothing but the Bible.

This will sufficiently show how the great disputes about education are consistent with men's admitting that definition of it which I gave at the beginning of my sermon. All but the Bible became debatable ground, and its greater or less usefulness was asserted or denied on all sorts of different principles, men seeming to suppose all the while that religious education was not concerned in the dispute. And thus I have no doubt that it has been with perfect sincerity in the minds of many of its supporters, that a system of education has been set up, which professes to leave religion out, and yet to teach history, political economy, law, and moral philosophy. It is said,-" We do not profess to interfere with religious education, -that we leave to the parents; we merely wish to give education in science, both physical and moral." I have no doubt that this was, and is said, in a great many cases, with perfect sincerity; the more so, because it quite agrees with the opinions of another set of persons, to whom I alluded before, and who, meaning to give a religious education, teach the Bible only. It is manifest, that both these classes of persons go upon the same ground, namely, that religious education is to be given only out of the Bible; and