life, and out of the world, in ignorance of the first principles of their faith.

Greatly, therefore, I conceive, are they mistaken, who deem it right or expedient to defer teaching children the wisdom of God and the faith of Christ, till they are arrived at an age, when their reasoning faculties are competent to judge of the importance of the subjects proposed to them. It would be well, if they, who entertain this opinion, would seriously reflect, that if they are right, St. Paul is wrong; that if their ideas upon this point are just and correct, there is, what we have always been taught to consider as impossible, fallacy in the word of inspi ration.

The Church of England baptizes infants almost as soon as they are born. She receives them at the earliest period into the Church of Christ * " by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." And the moment their minds are capable of admitting religious knowledge, she exhorts that it should be taught them. This is true and essential wisdom; for as she imparts to them, at their first entrance into the world, a title to the benefits of the Christian Covenant by the Rite of Baptism, so she endeavours to give them the means of securing those benefits, and of guarding them against the prejudices of error, by the precautionary and preventive method of instruction which she has enjoined.

Education, and the best mode of facilitating and promoting it, have occupied the attention of the wise and good of every age and country. In the Christian world, owing to the more extensive knowledge of the truth which our religion has afforded, to the disclosure which it has made of future scenes, and to the charitable feelings and sympathies which it has inspired into the human breast, education has arrived at a degree of excellence, far superior to any of which the Heathen nations, or even the Jews themselves, could boast. In the course of time it has received great improvements, in the method of communicating and extending its advantages; and in our day it has, from a newly-invented system of operation, met with an impulse, which promises to circulate throughout our own country, and, probably, in the process of years, throughout the nations of the world, the blessings of that knowledge, that faith, and that love and practice of every Christian Virtue, on which present happiness and future glory depend.

It is from experiment, suggested by the deep reflection and inventive faculties of the mind, that the world has derived most of its valuable improvements. But experiments are often dangerous. It is, therefore, a wise and proper jealousy to watch and examine them, to try them by the severest tests, to enquire into the nature and tendency of their operations, and to see that they do not interfere with established truths and acknowledged advantages, that they are not connected with unnecessary innovations and visionary perfections, and that they do not, under fair and specious promises of good, contain some latent principles of evil.

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Now the experiment, which has been of late so much the subject of commendation, has been watched with the keenest eye of jealousy; it has stood the severest enquiry, that wisdom, prejudice, and opposition, could institute; its nature and tendency have been thoroughly investigated, and its effects have been seen, witnessed, and felt; and what has been the result? The result that ever attends an examination of what is good. It has been proved, and the highest wisdom and the first characters of the land have given their attestation, that so far from interfering with established truths and acknowledged advantages, it imparts an increased power to the former, and a wider circulation to the latter; that, instead of introducing any unnecessary innovation, or holding out any visionary perfection, it aims only at rendering instruction in religion, morals, and useful industry, more easy, expeditious, economical, effective, and general, and at improving the state of society by making its members, and especially its poorer members, better acquainted with the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the duties of their respective callings; and that, as the Evi

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dences of Practical Illustration which it has produced plainly show, it not only does not contain any latent principles of evil, but that the promises of benefit which it held out, fair and vast as they were, have already been realized beyond all expectation.

I am an enemy to every new project,

which calls in question, or tends to raise a prejudice against, what the wisdom of ages, or the Word of Scripture, has declared to be good; but I am a friend to every experiment, that has the extension of this good for its object, and that furnishes more active and powerful means of advancing the present and future happiness of mankind. Indeed I should esteem myself unworthy the office I hold of Minister of the Gospel of Christ, if I did not rejoice in this New System of Education, which has so happy a tendency to give an increased circulation to the Word of God; if I did not openly approve of it, if I did not strongly recommend it, as one of the greatest blessings that Christian Philanthropy has conferred upon the world.

The advantages that attend this New