Page:A Sermon Preached in Westminster Abbey (Lichfield).djvu/10

 questioned (I am speaking to Churchmen) and of whose beneficial working the Church has had long and large experience, a plain and simple statement will be accepted by kindly-disposed hearers in the place of an eloquent and highly-wrought appeal. And sure I am that the "National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church" comes under that description. Its name is clearly expressive of its character and design. It is national in its aims and objects. It was established in order that it might be a national blessing, by imparting the benefits of education to that large class of our people from which they had hitherto been withheld: such a withholding being (as I have now neither need nor time to show) irreconcilable with the conclusions of reason, with the lessons of experience, with the whole tenor and spirit of Scripture.

But while the Society seeks to educate the poor, it seeks to educate them on certain principles; for its founder were persuaded, and its friends and supporters at this day are not less fully persuaded, and that, too, from a longer and larger experience, that an education not grounded upon fixed principles is profitless, and worse than profitless; or rather, that it is no education at all; a teaching but not a training; instruction unaccompanied with rules for using the lessons given rightly and beneficially; a communication of knowledge, but a knowledge altogether different from that of which I have been speaking to-day; a knowledge neither directed by wisdom, nor hallowed by religion; a knowledge, it may be, it too often has been, which, according to a prophet's description, makes men "wise to do evil," but not to do good.

What then were the principles upon which those wise and good men who founded this Society forty-five years ago (and many of whom it was my happiness to know) determined that its work should be done? They were the principles of that Church of which they were then, as we, I trust, are now, faithful, and afiectiouate, and grateful members; the Church in whose arms we were nursed, through whose ministrations we are fed with the bread of life; and in whose bosom we desire to be, as they have been, laid to rest; the Church which we love and venerate, because (without judging those who separate themselves from it) we honestly believe it to be scriptural in its doctrine, and primitive in its constitution; and whose formularies we regard as "sound words," to be used in the great work of general education, not to supersede, (God forbid!) but to illustrate, and explain, the Bible.