SERMON I. ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. ST. MARK x. 14. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not."'* THE season has again returned, my brethren, when we are to commemorate the arrival of our Saviour; and I believe there are few thoughtful men who do not meet its return with some sentiments of solemn joy. Whatever may be the interests or the attractions of the world, there is something in them which does not fill all the capacity of the human heart; and there is a kind of sublime delight in leaving the changeable scenes of time, to fix our thoughts upon the unchangeable subjects of religion. It is grateful too, in such seasons, to feel, that all our Christian brethren throughout the world are united with us in the same sentiments and the same services; that every Christian heart is now beating with the same emotion of gratitude; and every Christian tongue is repeating the same hymn of adoration and praise. But most of all, perhaps, it is affecting to us to feel the sacred influence which time has thrown over these services of religion;-to remember through how many ages of the human race this season has been welcomed with holy joy ;-to think, that the same sentiments which now animate our hearts, have animated the hearts of successive generations which are long cold in the grave; and that the service, to which the voice of religion at this time summons us, is that which has conducted the pious and the good of all those former generations, "into the fulness of their master's joy." In such high and holy meditations, the littleness of present time and present interests disappear. The past and the future rise before us in all the solemn grandeur of religion; and the heart finds at last, objects that can fill all its capacity, and satiate all its desires. Among the many duties to which seasons of this kind so solemnly invite us, there is one which is, perhaps, above all others, natural and important. It is that of the Instruction of the Young in the principlas of their religion. While we are preparing ourselves for these solemnities, "the 99 ,, little children" every where surround us, looking with eager eye to the services in which we are employed, and anxious that we should "suffer them" to share with us in these exercises of devotion, which a secret instinct has already 'taught them to be the highest duty as well as privilege of their being. It is a call to us "to forbid "them not"-to seize the sacred moments when nature longs for instruction; and (in such hours particularly as the present,) when they see the whole Christian world preparing to commemorate the advent of that Saviour in whose name they were baptized, to teach them the high purposes for which he came, and the mighty blessings which he has bequeathed to them. Of this important education, it is very little, you must all perceive, that can be done in this place. The publick education of the church can teach, indeed, a "form of sound words," but it can teach them as a form only. It can furnish the minds of the young with general principles of belief; but it is incapable of furnishing those continued and particular illustrations. which alone can bring them home to their imagination and their hearts; and what, I fear, is its worst consequence, it is apt to familiarize the minds of the young too early to conceptions of which their nature. is |