ture, there is little cause for preference; and the rule should be, that where good is evidently produced, and the grace of charity duly called forth and exercised, there should be to the rich, at least, who can patronise different institutions at the same time, no hesitation, in contributing, whenever occasion occurs, to the welfare and continuance of them all. They are all honours to the country; all blessings to the poor; all acceptable to heaven; and all entitled to the support of every real Christian, furnished with ability.

Let us, who are now convened by the grace of God for the purpose, be steadfast and immovable, in supporting an Institution to which time has given its sanction. Let us rejoice that this is a charity, not confined to the relief of bodily diseases or temporary distress, but extending its influence to the mind, and contributing to save souls alive; a sublime charity, charity to the soul of an immortal creature, which no alteration of modes or external circumstances can ever render useless or obsolete. The charitable act which we shall do this day will be the means, long after the objects shall have left this house, of creating or preserving in them "a clean heart," and of "renewing a right spirit within them;" convincing them through life, and in all their future relations" that he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh, reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting."

The compassion of our Saviour is to be our model. We feel the momentary impulse, let us obey it as he did, before the world and its cares, and its pleasures, and its vanities erase the impression. Come unto us, let us say, to the fallen daughter of affliction, come unto us, thou that labourest and art heavy laden with sin and its wages sorrow, and we will

refresh you. Our doors of mercy are open to thee, when every other door, but that which leadeth to destruction, is closed upon thee. Thou hast no friend, and no father and no mother; they hide themselves from thee in shame and sorrow; but we will be unto thee as a friend, a father and a mother, till thy reformation shall restore thee to them all, and they shall open their arms to receive the penitent mourner, wearied and sorely bruised and wounded in the dismal, thorny, miry path, into which thou hast strayed; here shalt thou find pity; nor pity only, but rest, a home, food, a shelter, raiment, and instruction in thy duty to God, thy neighbour, and thyself; and he who came to bind up the broken heart and to heal the bruised, will pour balsam into thy wounds. Thy days of bitterness shall soon be past, and pious sorrow, by the grace of God, turned to holy joy. He who sincerely repents (said a father of the church) has almost recovered his innocence; and sincere repentance, under the law of love, which Christ established, is by his divine favour, restoration and recovery, pardon and salvation.

May God give thee grace to avail thyself of this invitation, and us also grace to proceed in this and every other work which may improve our charity, and secure to ourselves the compassionate regard of that High Priest, who on earth felt pity for the suffering sinner, and still, though exalted to heaven, is touched with a feeling of all our infirmities.

SERMON XXVIII.

THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR RECOMMENDED.

[Preached at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, 1814, for the benefit of the National Schools.]

JOHN, viii. 12.-I am the Light of the World.

Let there be lIGHT, was the first command of the Lord God Almighty, in the noblest exertion of his omnipotence. The glorious emanation, bursting from its orient fountains, instantly obeyed; and all nature, fresh from the hand of her Author, glowed with the beauty of variegated colour. But this primordial light, lovely though its appearance, and stupendous its essence, is still, we know, but a body created, physical and material. Another light there is, and a greater and a holier, of which the solar beam, all pure and radient as it streams from the day-star, is but the emblem and the harbinger.

For hear the voice of our Saviour. I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. In the vivid language of eastern metaphor, he styles himself the sun of the intellectual system, the luminary of the soul.

Light indeed is synonimous in Scripture with wisdom, knowledge, happiness, life; life spiritual, and life immortal and darkness, in the same figurative language, implies ignorance, misery, and death ; spiritual death, in the midst of animal life, and eternal death, when animal life is no more.

He indeed who made the sun, and commanded it thus to revolve for ever in its orbit, GOD HIMSELF, says the Apostle, is LIGHT; and we are well assured,

that the first adoration ever offered by man was to the sun; of all visible objects, the most strikingly illustrious, and most obviously beneficial. But as the sun is to the earth, to the visual faculties of animals, and to all things susceptible of its influence, such is Christ, such the spirit of the Holy One that inhabits eternity, to the soul of man; dispensing to it analogous benefits, producing on it analogous effects, dispelling its darkness, and vivifying, with genial warmth, all its latent energy.

On the day of redemption, indeed, the FIAT of God operated no less graciously and powerfully than when, in the morning of the creation, the sun, for the first time, went forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiced, as a giant, to run his

course.

For when the sun of righteousness arose, with healing in his wings, and the feet of him that brought glad tidings, appeared so beautiful on the mountains, how did he announce his dignity? I am the light of the world. It is a description truly sublime; beautiful in its imagery, and no less just than beautiful. Few are the words; but magnificent the style, and momentous the purport; such indeed as could proceed from the lips of him alone, the loftiness of whose nature enabled him to utter them with appropriate grace, and without the slightest semblance of vain glory.

That Christ is the sacred source of all spiritual illumination is thus plainly declared, and must be confessed by all his followers, with sentiments of wonder and gratitude. But the occasion, on which we are now assembled, requires that we view him as the world's great luminary in another sense; a sense most highly interesting to man, though in comparison, but secondary and subordinate. I mean that

he is collaterally the copious source of the less perfect radiance, still, in a high degree luminous, which has flowed upon the world from the preservation of LEARNING in the dark ages; from the cultivation of science in times of barbarism; and from a partial attention to education, in some mode and measure, however confined and inadequate, amidst the shades of ignorance gross as universal.

For it is true (and the page of history will justify the assertion), that the learning, or the means of learning, which we now so amply possess, were preserved from total destruction, by circumstances peculiar to Christianity.

It is a curious but incontestable fact, that for ages after the sixth century, when all learning in Europe was enveloped in clouds, the Egyptian darkness was in some degree dispelled from the church, and a dim religious light constantly preserved in the cloister. A pale tremulous flame, every where else extinguished, still glimmered through the aisles, and faintly illumined the arches of the abbey. Feeble indeed were its rays, like those of a sepulchral lamp or a vapour in the charnel-house. It emitted a light scarcely more than darkness visible; yet still it preserved those scintillations, whose flame afterwards irradiated whole empires with its blaze. It quivered, like an expiring taper for a time, but at last kindled a torch which lighted up the avenues to education; and eventually became the light of the world in the diffusion of general knowledge, together with the peculiar radiance of revealed religion.

According to this view of the church and of ancient times, the highest learning and philosophy, even the organon of our own Verulam, the system of our own Newton, the epics of our own Milton, all the advancements in polite learning and recondite science,