such as shall neither be faulty through excess or defect, which, whilst it provides every thing necessary, every thing likely to be for the present or future good of such children, rejects every thing of dangerous tendency, or questionable use. But above all things will the prudent and the pious take care, (in the adjustment of their plans of charitable education,) lest they become instrumental in the production and propagation of discontent among the children of poverty; they will take care not to incur the responsibility of educating children, not for known employments, but conjectural purposes; not for any actual or probable expectancies, but for possible events. They will shrink from the danger of becoming partakers in other men's sins, by approving and promoting any course of secular training, which may be likely to create disgust, provoke restlessness, produce disappointment in after life: disgust, in minds conscious of possessing powers which they cannot apply; restlessness, in dispositions bent upon exchanging the labours of humble life for higher ranges of exertion, and more intellectual occupations; disappointment, in those who seek, but cannot attain to, higher degrees of rank and credit than those which they possess, and larger returns of profit than any they can procure. Neither will the judicious framers of a course of charity-school-instruction confine their attention to the poor alone; they will extend their benevolent consideration to those praiseworthy individuals, (but

still in humble life,) who, out of the hard-earned proceeds of their honest industry, labour to pay for the education of their children.

If eleemosynary instruction be carried so far as to place the charitably educated, and the independently educated, upon the same footing, with respect to their future prospects and occupations, injustice will be done to the poor but respectable parents, in commercial or agricultural life, who educate their children at their own cost; and their injury will consist in this, in finding those children detruded from those profitable and creditable employments, for which they have been at the charge of educating them; in seeing them depressed below their proper level, whilst the children of their inferiors have been raised above it by this superabundance of charitable instruction.

To those who are acquainted with the distinctions between the kinds of poverty in middling and humble life, and who can understand and estimate the claims of those who, though poor, strive to pay for their children's education, all this will appear to be the representation of a reality, to others a refinement. But this is but one of many disturbances which will be brought upon the surface, or rather introduced into the recesses, of social life, by a gratuitous course of super-education. The equalization and assimilation of such knowledge, whether it be by compulsory enactments or by charitable institutions, will disorganize some of the most im

portant parts in the social system, and (as far as they go) will tend to destroy those beautiful as well as benevolent provisions in the natural and providential laws of God, by which the rich are obliged to have recourse to the poor, and the poor to the rich, the informed to the ignorant, and the ignorant to the informed; who are thus led, by a sense of their respective wants, to the interchange of various services, manual and intellectual, to the discharge of many duties to individuals and society, to the exercise of many graces of the heart and of the understanding.

The course of charitable education, on the behalf of which it is my duty to appeal to your prudence as well as charity, to your equitable regard for the interests of all, as well as to your benevolence towards the children of the poor, that course of education cannot be justly charged with any effects or tendencies of this sort. The eleemosynary instruction given to these children labours not under the objection either of being defective, that is, falling short of what is suitable to the condition and prospects of the children, or of being excessive to the derangement of the constitution of things, and of the relations of persons in society.

By assisting in the support of these schools, you become instruments in the accomplishment of those great ends of all religious and civil training, which the Almighty has been pleased to declare by the revelations of his will, and to indicate by the evi

dences of nature and providence. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. He would have all things to be done in order, in matters educational, as well as those which relate to the constitution and government of his Church. By the aid which you may administer, you will assist in giving to these children a training in the way they should go; such a course of early instruction, as will form them for their appointed places, and fit them for their future movements in the complex machinery of civil life. You will (with God's assistance) cause them to be builded together, and fitly framed together, so as to grow into an holy temple in the Lord. You will enable them to grow up unto him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body is fitly joined together, and compacted of that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part. Let these considerations govern the course of instruction given to these children-let them also govern your patronage and support. Charitable duties of this sort, if they be carried on upon principles so agreeable to the will and word of God, are of higher obligation than any which are occupied exclusively upon the relief of man's bodily wants and afflictions. The sort of almsgiving, to which I would now invite you, (not merely by the reasonings or representations of my argument, but by every motive and consideration which can awaken Christian charity,) is one, that has nobler views and purposes than any, which can

be proposed in relieving the hungry and thirsty, the sick and needy, the houseless and prisoner.

True it is, that it is not enumerated among those deeds of mercy, for the doing or not doing of which, we are, according to our Saviour's representations, to be held accountable in the day of judgment. But then it is to be borne in mind, that all those responsibilities have been made to attach to the performance or nonperformance of charitable duties, towards persons labouring under bodily privations and distress; the hungry and thirsty, the sick and naked, the stranger and prisoner, were selected as cases for the illustration of the comprehensive nature of charity towards man's wretchedness in things external. But there are other responsibilities which lie as heavily upon the Christian's conduct and conscience, in respect of the due discharge of charitable duties towards the soul of man. And in the same measure and degree in which the soul is more precious than the body; and the privations and diseases, alienations, and captivities of the soul, more dangerous in themselves, and more disastrous in their consequences; so are they more urgent in their claims upon our compassion, more imperative in their application for assistance and relief. Out of the soul's hunger and thirst, its sickness and nakedness, its estrangement from God and captivity to Satan, arise many large and laborious classes of charitable duties, running in lines parallel with those, which are occupied upon the relief of bodily wants and