it is consecrated to make the miserable happy, and the ignorant to learn the truth which alone makes free. It is said in classic history, that a statuary, who resolved to cut out of the Parian marble a female figure, the most beautiful and graceful that the world ever saw or the poet ever dreamed of, induced all the beauties of Greece to come to him in succession, while he selected from each the feature that was in the highest perfection, and transferred it to the marble on which he was working; and when this beautiful thing was finished, it became the admiration of Greece and of the utmost bound of Europe. But each Greek female felt that she was honored by having some feature of her own in that exquisite creation of the statuary's chisel. So, when you can look into our schools, when you can look into society, and feel that some portion of it is, by grace, the creation, under God, of what you have sacrificed and done, you will have more than a reward in the result, and you will know and taste a happiness you never tasted before, the inestimable luxury of having done good.

But there are those who have no doubt of these things, who feel a sympathy with a brother wherever that brother is. Such will regard it as one of the best and noblest expressions of their sympathy to aid in educating the young. Those children in the lanes and alleys of St. Giles' are not vile weeds to be trodden down, or cast into the fire, or thrown to Botany Bay across the sea into your neighbor's garden. They are but trampled flowers, flowers as beautiful as those that grow in your own sheltered garden, if they had the same soil, and the same sun, and the same sweet air: and all we ask is, that you would just gather up those trodden-down flowers, and replace them under the beams of the true Sun, that you would put them in a wholesome air; and they will become yet the ornaments, where now they are the pests of the

neighborhood; and will be transplanted into the Paradise of God, and under the shadow and the shelter of the Tree of Life that grows in the midst of it. The children of today are the future inhabitants of our different colonies; and if we send them out converted and Christianized, instead of being repealers of the connection between the parent country and the distant colonies, they will be indissoluble links between them: these children will be the champions of a throne under the shadow of which they have been blessed, and sticklers for the national institutions which have been to them springs of refreshment; we shall look back upon the schools we have built, and the sacrifices we have made, with a joy far greater than that with which a student looks back upon his college, or an architect upon his magnificent creation, or the sentimentalist upon the beautiful cathedral, or the statesman upon successful policy: for in such cases we have been instrumental in adding subjects to the kingdom of God, and building up living temples that will last for ever and for ever.

If we let the stray children alone, if we say, We will not be the keepers of them, Satan will not let them alone, he will keep them; the emissaries of socialism, and infidelity, and superstition will not let them alone, they will look after them; the gaol will not let them alone, it will hold them. And what, I ask, is more awful than to see some dozen children, seven or ten years of age, brought into a police court, because they have done what they scarcely had an idea of being wrong; because they have picked a pocket, which they thought just as natural as to eat a dinner? And because they have done this, they are seized and sent to Bridewell; and what is the result? They are lost; none will take them into the shop as apprentices, or into our houses as servants; they are indelibly branded. Can you wonder that they grow up more confirmed and des

perate criminals? Now, if that child, instead of being left to pursue the habits of the wicked men by whom it is surrounded, had been admitted among the children of day and Sunday-schools, instead of growing up a burden on our taxes, a curse to our country, and miserable, oh deeply miserable to itself, it might have grown up a blessing, a benefactor, an ornament in the land to which it belongs.

It may be, that some past word one of us has spoken is at this moment reverberating in some dark lane of London. Some dark deed that you have done may at this moment be casting its baleful shadow over some home, or family, or neighborhood, or parish. Something that you have said, or patronized, some course you have pursued, may be leaving disastrous, poisonous, soul-destroying effects in some place that memory may forget, but that conscience will one day feel. Then, you are verily guilty concerning your brother; you are guilty, not of neglecting him, but in that you have poisoned him. Then, what is to be done? The word cannot be unspoken, the deed cannot be undone, the shadow cannot be recalled; but you may redeem the time, you may repent of the sin, you may make the reparation that you can, and that reparation is, by laboring to counteract the evil you have left, by the good, the beneficence, and the truth that you now apply through that instrumentality which is nearest, readiest, and most effective for the purpose. Where then is thy brother? may suggest recollections of the past as well as duties for the present.

In looking at this solemn subject immediately before us, one of the first feelings that we ought to entertain on a retrospect of what we have done, and what we have left undone, is that of true and genuine repentance. "We are verily guilty concerning our brother," is the language that becomes us all.

And, in the next place, the way to show that genuine

repentance is to commit ourselves to every beneficent effort to spread the truth that elevates, the religion that reclaims, the principles that save. Suppose we do not yet see from the schools we aid, or the missions we support, a single good result, that would be no reason for our withdrawing our support. We are very prone to judge of duty by visible effects. I do not believe that either sudden conversion or sudden good is always the most substantial and enduring. God's great law is, "One soweth and another reapeth." I am not responsible for the soil; God alone can change it. I am not responsible for the harvest; God will take care of it. All that I am responsible for is sowing the seed. Man's is the terrestrial labor, God's promise is the celestial blessing. Let each do his duty, and leave God to crown that duty with success. And is not this illustrated in our own experience? We are reaping at this moment blessings that our forefathers have sown. Their labors had no instant success. Pentecost itself, when so many thousands were converted in one day, I do not believe that Pentecost was the harvest of the seed that Peter sowed that day. Our common impression, when we read the Acts, is, that Peter's sermon was so blessed that it produced a Pentecost. I believe that Peter's sermon merely brought to a focus lights that were already struggling and scattered in the minds of his hearers; and that Pentecost was the result of all that Jesus did, and taught, and said, as well as what the Apostles preached; in short, that Peter only struck the last blow, which was the crowning one. The Reformation itself of the sixteenth century was not the creation of Martin Luther. He sowed; but I have no doubt that he also reaped what had been sown by reformers long before him. And when you hear of sudden conversion's attributed to one sermon, you may depend upon it, it was not the result of that single sermon: the seed had been sown by the dead,

by those that have gone to their rest, sown ten, twenty years before; and then, that last sermon put every thing in that light that God blessed it, and made it the crowning and the triumphant one. So, we must be satisfied to sow blessings that others shall reap. And no one can calculate the practical results of sowing in the infant mind the seeds of a Christian and a thorough education. The seeds will grow up in after years, when the early lesson book, and the first school, are utterly forgotten. I believe that the great hope under God for the regeneration of society, as far as it can be regenerated in the present dispensation, is less in the preaching of the pulpit, and more in the teaching of the school. The preacher finds men all hard, sharp, defined; but the teacher finds children ductile, easily impressed, to whom he may give a tone, a direction, and an impulse, which time will not easily alter. Our ministers teach lessons that may be soon forgotten; but our teachers train the young, and that training will give a bias, a habit, an inclination, not soon let go. But the question is not, whether our children, or the children in the streets, shall be trained; for it will very soon be seen that if they are not trained in our schools, they are being trained on the streets; if they are not trained by our teachers, they are by pickpockets and thieves; if they are not being trained in the Bible, they are trained in the sharpest methods of transferring other people's property to their own credit or behalf. And therefore, it is not a question whether they shall be trained; the question is, whether they shall be trained aright, or wrong. How they have been trained will soon make itself apparent by the channels in which their future life will run. Those channels will contain either the fruitful river, with the green verdure and the fragrant blossom on its banks, or the devastating torrents in the barren gully, that destroy and tear down every thing. And who knows, but from the