the first to the last hour of human existence, the Church is the instructor, the consoler, the friend of her people. And if such be her daily attributes and claims, shall we forget them in the most momentous period of all? If she be entitled to receive us as we enter the world, to console us as we leave it; if she superintend and sanctify the chiefest event of life, and hallow by her services the blessed seventh of our time; if she claim to be constantly around us, and with us, as the very presence of God in His servants, His temples, His observances, shall we defraud her of the most important of all her practical functions, her function of training her own youth for the heaven she promises? Shall we insult her claims by consigning to her disposal the weary fragment of a laborious day, the refuse of a mind already harassed by over-wrought attention, and think that we have allowed the high prerogatives of religion, when we give to the science of the skies what the exhausted memory can spare from the demands of its geography and its arithmetic? Decide the matter as you will, the ministers of the Church know their duty. Christ has commanded them to "feed his lambs," and they will not yield the work to an alien hand. They will no more resign the school than the pulpit to occupants in whom they cannot confide; for what is the desk of the schoolmaster but the pulpit of hourly preaching? In such a resolution they ask your aid and co-operation; they act for the Church at large, and you are as essential an element of the Church as they; as genuine a portion of the body, as deeply interested in its welfare, as the most exalted of its commissioned minis ters. Engaged on such a topic, I would not willingly descend to lower considerations; but were the transition ever in this place admissible, I might surely be justified in reminding you how deeply, on grounds of even temporal calculation, the lovers of peace are interested in the power and permanence of the Church of Ireland; the great link, as she unquestionably is, between us and that country which it is our honour as well as our security to accompany on the page of history; the strong cable which, more durably than all others put together, anchors us beneath the majestic shadow of England's power and England's fame. Were even such grounds as these our only grounds, we might call upon you to aid us, and, in aiding us, to strengthen your own tenure of national prosperity and peace. It is true we cannot speak of State support; I will not believe that we are to be ultimately left without it, or that the National Church -so long the martyr of its principles-shall still continue to be the only body in the State whose children are coldly abandoned to the chances of private charity. But in resolving to labour for ourselves, neither despairing of such support nor delaying for it, we achieve no novelty in our history. It is the known and recorded characteristic of these British Isles, that nearly all their most comprehensive and important undertakings, those works and institutions which urge civilization in a year beyond the growth of ages,—the Post Office, the Railway, the College, the Canal;-have begun in private enterprise, and not received the support of the State until they had become of sufficient magnitude to require assistance, or encouragement, or direction. Let it be for us to impress the country with maxims which must impress the State. By large and liberal support to the Society your prelates have organized, encourage the great principle, that in all which concerns the education of the people, and, above all, of the labouring people (who can get but one education, not like the children of wealth and leisure, who can get a thousand educations from a thousand sources),-that in all which regards the education of the masses, the Church of Christ, through all its local divisions, is the appropriate organ, the consecrated teacher, and cannot be disseised of her right until convicted of incompetence, inherent and irremediable. Her right is derived from a source beyond earth, it cannot without a crime be surrendered. Her commission is from the skies; it cannot be superseded by the self-constituted emissaries of self-constituted associations. We are the ordained and intrusted teachers of the people; the charter is from Christ, and through Christ from the throne of God. Schemes of instruction, projects of enlightenment, arise, and flourish, and die; alone, immortal, and impassible, the Church of Christ has lived a life of centuries, and shows no symptoms of decrepitude yet. The corruptions of her earthly scene (for she is yet but militant) have often darkened her with their gloomiest shadow, but no earthly power shall ever pierce a vital part. The body of Christ is immortal as its immortal Head! And if you would know what is the essence of all legitimate "National Education" in the eye of Him who is Lord of nations, read it in the pro mise in which, commissioning her to be the instructress . YOU ALWAY, even unto the end of the world!" THE END. |