including some who had not been in the school more than eight or nine months, read a chapter from the Old Testament, and replied to all the questions which I proposed to them from it, surpassed my highest expectations, and confirmed the judgment I had previously formed of the tendency of these admirable establishments. The moral effects also which I was informed had already appeared in the children and in the families to which they belonged, and which were beginning to have an influence throughout the parish, may encourage the hope that many of these scholars will not only attain to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, but will be thereby made wise unto Salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And when it is considered that five thousand children, in this parish alone, were found to be without the means of education, and that the majority of those already admitted were previously allowed to wander through the streets of the neighbourhood in negligence and vice, it may easily be imagined what the real amount of ultimate good may, under the blessing of God, eventually be.

་

Yield then, my brethren, to the holy emotion which I cannot but hope has been excited in your minds, by these plain but affecting statements. It is God who has appointed the various orders of society, and appointed them for the very purpose that the affluent may assist

the indigent and distressed. Nor is there any mark so appropriate to the disciples of Christ as that of loving one another. And if the principles I have endeavoured to enforce in this discourse, be so high and holy as I am assured they are; if the Holy Scriptures be the book bestowed on man to teach him the way to Heaven; if this book is to be communicated to the young from their earliest childhood; and if it be able to make them wise unto salvation; then all the ordinary motives to Christian benevolence acquire, in this instance, a double force.

Nor let us fear to act nobly on an occasion like the present. Few persons have ever lost by their charities. The blessing of God maketh rich. Economy is the spring of real benevolence. We are injured indeed by negligence of our affairs, by prodigal expense, by pride, by ostentation-but no man was eventually the poorer for what he gave away-Honour the Lord with thy substance and the first-fruits of all thine increase; so shall thy barns be filled with plenteousness, and thy presses burst out with new wine. He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord; and, look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid him again. Need I add, that the best evidence we can give of our gratitude for the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, with which God has blessed us, and for that eternal salva

tion to which he calls us by faith in Christ Jesus, is to assist others in attaining these blessings; which, if God had pleased, we might have been under the necessity of supplicating ourselves, and which we have received freely that we may freely communicate them to our more necessitous brethren.

THE DUTIES AND TEMPER OF THE

CHRISTIAN SHEPHERD.

A

SERMON

PREACHED AT THE

PARISH CHURCH OF ST. MARY,

ISLINGTON,

On Sunday, July 11, 1824,

ON OCCASION OF

BEING INDUCTED INTO THE VICARAGE OF THAT CHURCH.

FUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF

THE CHURCHWARDENS, AND MANY OF THE PRINCIPAL PARISHIONERS.

THIRD EDITION.