A SUNDAY-SCHOOL DICTIONARY : TO WHICH IS PREFIXED A PASTORAL ADDRESS TO TEACHERS AND SCHOLARS. BY WILLIAM PARKS, B.A. INCUMBENT OF OPENSHAW, MANCHESTER. "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines."- "Unless we look up to God, it is in vain to look into books." LONDON: H. G. COLLINS, 22, PATERNOSTER ROW. MANCHESTER: WHITMORE. 1850. INTRODUCTION. TO THE TEACHERS AND ELDER SCHOLARS OF ST. BARNABAS' SCHOOL, OPENSHAW. MY DEAR FRIENDS, In compiling this little Dictionary, I have been actuated by the simple desire to be useful to you. My observation of your attainments has impressed me with the conviction that, though much has already been accomplished by you, and though, doubtless, you feel conscious of possessing a considerable stock of knowledge, especially in connection with God's word, you are yet far behind that point of intelligence at which you, and all Sunday-School Teachers and Scholars, with privileges such as yours, ought to have arrived. The most constant and laborious viva voce teaching on the part of a minister, I find to be totally inadequate to supply even common-place information to his pupils. There must be a condensed mass of knowledge in the hands, or within easy reach, of those pupils; something that they can refer to --something that they can study, or something to put them in the way of studying. This desideratum is supplied by a book or two; but there is such a multitude of books, advocating such a multitude of opinions in these days, that it would be a matter of no ordinary difficulty to select a sound work from amongst them. There are what are called "high church" books and "low church" books, "Tractarian" books and "Evangelical" books, in profusion-but nearly all are tainted with what I conceive to be error. So then, as your pastor, I have felt constrained to compile this little book for your special instruction. I hope it may be blessed to your edification; and that the information contained in it may not satisfy you, but act as an incentive or stimulant to your spiritual appetite. Of course it will be censured by many, and its compiler will be called "presumptuous; " but this will matter little. I quarrel with no man on account of his creed or his definitions. If even a man come to me and say, with the gravity of a hermit, that he has got an argument to prove that two and two make five, that fields are not green, or that fire is not hot, I will not quarrel with him, but he must not be surprised if I apply to him a very terse epithet. Or, if a man come to me, and say, “I am inspired, I have had revelations, I have been up to heaven, or down to hell," I will not quarrel with him; but he must not take it amiss if I remove all dangerous implements out of his reach. Every man is at perfect liberty to think of me as he chooses; and, on the score of fair play, I ask permission to hold my opinion, and to express it, too, of every man and every sect I meet. In the following pages you will perceive that I have not neglected to take advantage of this privilege. The learning, whether real or supposed; the renown, whether merited or undeserved of the parties holding views incompatible with those I believe to be taught by God's Spirit, has not prevented me assigning those parties the position I deem them worthy to occupy. If a knowledge of God's eternal truths were to be attained by vast learning, or commanding intellect, I confess I should not have dared to impugn the notions of such men as Socinus, or Swedenborg, or of even some of the Tractarians of our own day; but when it is distinctly affirmed, by those who best knew, that human learning and human intellect have little or nothing to do with the reception of God's revelation by the mind of man— when we are expressly assured, by the word of God itself, that "the wise and prudent" have often had |