we may always have to be proud of our beloved land. And now in reference to you, teachers; and am I not right, sir, in addressing them as teachers? Ah! sir, we expect from this army of King Jesus exploits ten thousand times as brilliant as ever will be performed by those men in or around the kingdom of Sardinia. These will appeal to the mind, and who will not say, God bless them? But our work is not yet done. You know, they used to say in this country, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion;" but that old notion is dead and it is buried, and we have put it down so deep that it won't rise again here; but we do not rest yet; we have written upon our banner, "For the soul to be without knowledge, is not good." We shall go and take it, and put it upon the last citadel of ignorance, until heaven shall echo with the cry, They all know God, from the least to the greatest." Go on, my fellowteachers; go on, you that are our co-workers in the vineyard of God-our companions in arms; by-and-by the battle will be over, the victory will be gained, and the great God will say to us, "Well done, good and faithful servants, inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.".

The Rev. WILLIAM BROCK Seconded the resolution. He said Dear Sir, my christian friends, I should always like to have just such a precursor or forerunner as my friend, Mr. Bushell; though it does somewhat endanger the seconder of a resolution, too, to have a mover like that. He has in few words, but most apt and effective words, opened out and exhausted the resolution; he has done it so well, that really that which one might have had to say must be left unsaid, because it is before you already; so I must leave the resolution in spite of myself. I am not one of the preachers, Sir, that always take three divisions; I think my friend was a little wrong there; he must speak for himself, not for me. Very often I have no divisions at all, and all that I care about in the way of divisions at any time is that the word may be "rightly divided," so that each may have a portion in due season. The very first speech I ever made in this hall was for the Sunday School Union; and I remember well the next day, in another part of London, hearing some one speaking about the meeting of the night before (and he is on the platform now) and he said, “Our young brother from Norwich did admirably." Now that was I, a young brother! Well, Sir, I am very glad that we get old; for where in the world would there be any room for us, if we did not? Where would Mr. Bushell have been, for instance, if I had not got old? But I am very thankful we do not get old together; that would be a calamity, I take it. I am very glad we do not get old at once; I should have been very sorry to have been what I was when I was the young brother in my first address to this Union, and then to be what I am, at a vault. I do not know how I should have felt or got on if that had been so; but God's plans and arrangements are always so beautiful; I feel now, I think, very much as I felt then; and I think that the feeling, as one gets older, improves, ripens, culminates towards perfection; and I stand here to-night after twenty years or more of hard wear and tear, a firmer friend of the Sunday School Union than was then, and a more intelligent friend, therefore, a stronger friend. I have not been pastor of a church for twenty-five years and more, without knowing the value of the Sunday School. Times without number have I had the blessedness of receiving to fellowship and church-membership those who were converted to God in the classes of the Sunday school. The very last meeting over which I presided, when I had the blessedness of receiving the largest number I ever received at once to fellowship, there was a goodly admixture of Sunday school children. The very first children brought into my Sunday school at Bloomsbury ten years ago, are now joining our church time after time. I say that, to encourage you, teachers, and some of my brother ministers too. We have gone on, as I think, upon the principle that the teacher and the preacher have just one common object. That was well put by Mr. Watson in the Report, that the

preacher and the teacher have the same truth, and we have to a large extent the same kind of action. Only, according to his doctrine, and I believe it to be a sound one, you have rather the upper hand of us; you have a better opportunity than we have. I have often felt, "Oh, if I could get six or eight people at a time, and have an hour with them, instead of having six or eight hundred to talk to, some of whom I shall never see any more, and many of whom I can never get at foot to foot as you You have an opportunity that I know many of you do value, and out of which instrumentality I believe a great amount of your success has come. It is preaching and teaching, the same gospel, the same motives, the same hope and foundation of success, actuating you and actuating us.

can.

You remember how Paul burst out into thanksgiving because of the preaching of the gospel: "Therein I do rejoice; yea, and I will rejoice, because Christ is preached." Sir, I wonder how he would have rejoiced, if he had lived in London in 1859. Why, no preachers had ever been heard from the steps of the Capitol there; yet he rejoiced. No class of children had ever been gathered into the area of the Coliseum there; or into the comparative retirement of the Pantheon. Oh! if he could have done what we have been able to do with our teaching and preaching at Exeter Hall, and St. James's Hall, and Westminster Abbey, and all the other places besides, how he would have said, three or four times over, "Yea, and I will rejoice;" because he knew that by that sort of instrumentality God's work would be done on earth, and his will, even as it is done in heaven. I read the other day, I think somewhat in the prospect of this meeting, a very elaborate paper in a certain review, which ostentatiously proclaims itself the improver of the morals of the country, of the common people, on secular principles, and with secular instrumentality. I read that paper over and over and over again; and I stand on the platform at Exeter Hall to-night, and say, after the experience of centuries-large, painful experience, too-that there is not a provision mentioned in that paper for the ultimate improvement of this country that would not turn out to be labour in vain, and the spending of strength for naught. Good, I admit, in very many of its aspects; comparatively and subordinately good; but as to grasping the master evil, which is the parent of all evils, the depravity of human nature, it not only does not meddle with that, but it officially and formally ignores it, and says there is no such thing. How can there be anything but failure out of a scheme which is based on a bottom like that? We were called upon to give a sound and secular education to the masses. Do not content yourselves, they said, with just giving the rudiments of things, but cultivate and bring out results: discipline the mind for thinking; supply materials for thinking: familiarize the people with the best methods of thinking; tell them about the chemistry of common life; tell them about their moral, physical, and mental constitution; tell them about their duties to their families, and about their duties to the country; and, so far, you will have done well. Besides that, take care to give them remunerative labour; acknowledge the right of every man to live; and then insist upon the fair day's wages for the fair day's work. And screen your countrymen (we were told in that paper) from their dread of pauperism; let your so-called charity never insult them any more; and, so far, you will have done well. Then we were called upon to give them the blessings, to which our chairman has referred, of enfranchisement, the criminal and the incapable excepted; deal with them as men; take off the badges of serfdom from them, and let them be as you yourselves are; let them be free men; and, so far, you will have done well. Then get them to adopt civilized, social habits; alter, with their permission, or get them to alter, with their help, that which is confessedly on all sides so bad; get them to change filth for cleanliness; the rotten rag for the seemly garment; the dark, cribbed, dirty, dark attic, or the still darker

cellar, for the well-ventilated and well-lighted chamber; and, so far, you will do well. And then, as a sort of climax, let the taste of the people be educated; bring them into contact with your great works of ancient and modern art; throw open your museums to them; bring them into your sculpture-rooms, into your artistic and antique saloons, and stir up within them the aesthetic which is in every man's nature (which I rather doubt); ensure the abandonment of the base by inducing a love for the refined, and teach them to detest the grovelling, by causing them to be enraptured with the sublime. Well, I read all that; not in so many words, but in substance; and I said to myself, "I will read it again." That was just the whole of it—sound, secular education; remunerative labour; good, civilized, social habits ; the franchise, and the cultivation of the taste; and when you have done all this, you will have a moral, an enlightened, and a loyal population. Sir, I ask every man and every woman in this place, whether they do not observe the entire absence of God's very name in those suggestions? It is as though there were no God; as I do solemnly believe in the theories of those men there is no God. There is not a word said about setting the man's nature right; it is all setting his circumstances right. Dress him well; feed him well; house him well; but what about him-the underlying nature? Not a word; nothing about the seal, the fountain, the principle of all life and of all action; that is entirely left out of the question. Sir, the Sunday School Union takes it into the question, and, therefore, its operations will not fail, but, God blessing them, will succeed. We believe that as is a man's nature, so will be a man's life; and that as is the state of a man's heart so will be the state of that man's conduct! and we go everywhere, to every child in our infant classes, to the oldest boy or girl, or young man or maiden in our Bible classes, and we not only proclaim it when necessary, but, what is better, we assume it from first to last-the heart of every one of them is desperately wicked, and they must needs be born again. And so teaching and so believing, there is strong, and I hold it to be indubitable, reason for the belief that we shall not labour in vain, nor spend our strength for naught. I grant to the secularists that every one of these things that I have mentioned is valuable in its way. Let them not so far misrepresent us (as I believe some of them would) as to say: "Oh! those saints at Exeter Hall ignore all that." Sir, I ask who are the advocates of it all? Who were the advocates of it before some of these men were ever heard of? Why, the men who founded the Sunday School Union. Why, who is the man that goes about in all the dens and cellars of the metropolis? Lord Shaftesbury. Who are the practical secularists? Lord Shaftesbury, and our honourable chairman, and their coadjutors. But what about the other part of it? They are avowed honourable, public, consistent disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, willing to do all these things; but doing them in the second place, and taking care about that depravity in the first place of all. And then, what saith experience as to the success which these various measures would obtain? And, in the prospect of the future, what may we expect that they will secure? Sir, I ask this great assembly, and through them all England, whether the debaucheries that all so much deplore are to be found amongst the people exclusively who never went to school? I ask whether the dishonesties we so deplore are found amongst the men of scanty means? Nay; they are found, some of the worst of them, amongst the men who have fared sumptuously every day. I ask whether the inhumanities that we deplore are found amongst the men only from whom the franchise is withheld? Nay; they are found, to a large extent, amongst the men who boast that they are free. I ask whether the frauds and falsehoods we so much deplore are found most amongst the men who have not a house over their head? No; they are found, to a large extent, likewise amongst the men who have affluence and wealth almost boundless,

I ask once more, you and all England, whether the profanities we so much deplore are found alone amongst the men to whom the name of Rubens and of Michael Angelo are unknown? or whether they are not found among some of your choicest connoisseurs in art? I speak to wise men ; judge what I say. And if so, it becomes something worse than ignorance for people to go about and say, "Now give the people of England all these advantages, and then you will have all manner of morality; deal with their physical condition scientifically, and with their intellectual condition philosophically, and you will turn their habitations into a paradise, and themselves into princes and kings." Sir, all experience denies it, and the entire drift of revelation contradicts it; and we stand here to-night to say that, acting upon the contradiction, we have a more excellent way by teaching and by preaching every. where; that we are not to deal with symptoms, but with sources; that we are not to deal with profanity, or falsehood, or debauchery, or dishonesty, or inhumanity, in the forms in which they meet our eye now and then, but down in their most essential elements; and we go to our classes and our pulpits, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, not merely assuming the depravity of human nature, but knowing that we have a great cure for that depravity in the transforming efficacy of God the Holy Ghost, and in the precious blood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And give me what we have had now for fifty-six years, according to this Report; give me the Sunday School Union, embodying, as it does, the Sunday school operations, and if I be asked, as I have been asked in the paper, sneeringly and scornfully, "What comes of all your Sunday schooling, and your evangelical efforts!" I say, Sir, the attitude of our country amongst the countries of the earth comes of it. What comes of evangelical effort! The high position of old England at this moment; and not only its high position, but, I believe, its deeply founded and its invulnerable position, God helping us. What comes of it? Where have the men been living, or what have they been doing, to ask such a question? A loyal population; a throne established on the affections of the people; more love for men, and more reverence towards God, than the same population has seen ever since the world has existed. And that goes on with yet accumulating force from day to day. God does not forsake the work of his own hands. God does bless our children in our schools, and blesses them when they grow up to be parents, by making them blessings to their children. The work is going on to-night, and we give it an impulse here, and God blesses us as we are doing it. Then, as a yet larger result, what will follow? Honest speech; mercantile morality; genial, kindly neighbourhood; loyalty yet firmer and more intelligent the loving of one another as we love ourselves, because we have learned the great lesson of loving God with all our hearts. Give me a population doing that; and, as you know so well, Sir, we have a large mass of the population doing that now, doing it yet more and more; mark me, not the corrected ones, but the regenerated ones; not the improved ones, but the twice-born ones; not the amended ones in the exterior, but the newly created ones in the interior-the very nature itself transformed and that being the case, they will deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. No need for the law to arm itself to keep them in order; no need for justice to be ever on the alert for fear of them; no need for humanity to stand aloof, because it dreads them; no need for virgin modesty to stand in dread of such people as they approach. Conjugal relationships, filial, fraternal, parental relationships, are all held sacred. There, Sir, you have safety; and I venture the avowal that you have not it anywhere else. When a man is right with God, then is he right to be trusted with his fellow. So that after the Report we have read to-night, after what we find of promise in the annual meeting of this Union, I think we may say our "beloved" land indeed, with emphasis. Yes, Old England, there is hope for thee still. The burial-place of our

fathers, and the birthplace of our children, there is hope for Old England after all. She shall be delivered from her dreadful pauperism, and she shall be rescued from her unrighteous legislation; she shall be cleansed from her terrible licentiousness, and she shall be saved, God helping her, on the one hand, from the superstition that endangers our immortality, and, on the other hand, from the infidelity that laughs our immortality to scorn, and she shall become a royal habitation of righteousness, and joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost. Great Britain! great, not in the conventional designations of your secular geography alone; great, not in the grateful vocabulary of Italian refugees alone, and refugees from other lands, who will talk to you about Great Britain as you cannot understand, when they find in it a shelter and a home; great, not merely in the vocabulary of many-tongued and many-charactered people; but great in all the essential, the illustrious, wide-reaching, and everdeepening qualities of greatness, that will make her a light in the world and a praise in the whole earth. No work for some unborn Gibbon in the decline and fall of the British Empire, then; for there shall be impregnable stability; there shall be no inglorious, pitiful, disreputable downfall: but there shall be indefinite advancement and imperishable renown.

The resolution having been put, and carried unanimously, the audience joined in singing the following hymn.

HYMN II.

Tunc "PROSPECT."

How good and pleasant is the sight,
Where kindred souls agree;
Brethren, whose cheerful hearts unite
In bonds of piety.

When streams of love, from Christ the
Descend to every soul, [spring,
And heavenly peace, with balmy wing,
Shades and bedews the whole :-

No 43, Union Tune Book.

"Tis like the oil, divinely sweet,

On Aaron's reverend head;
The trickling drops perfumed his feet,
And o'er his garments spread :

'Tis pleasant as the morning dews
That fall on Zion's hill,

Where God his mildest glory shows,
And makes his grace distil.

The Rev. J. F. SERJEANT: I have to move the following resolution :"That while this meeting would desire to record its conviction that the increase of general education, and the extended circulation of periodical literature, require on the part of all those who undertake the intellectual and moral and religious instruction of others, diligent preparation for the faithful discharge of so important a duty, this meeting would also urge on all Sunday school teachers the necessity of sceking, by specific prayer for and with their scholars, and by personal and individual appeals to their hearts, to render the class instruction more interesting and efficient, and thus to bring the scholars to an early decision for Christ."

You see the resolution speaks of the increase of general education, and in the ex. tended circulation of periodical literature. It is an age of improvement. Truly, of the making of books there is no end. We have the Bible-the Book of books-of all sizes, at all prices, without note, or comment. Again, we have it beautifully illustrated and copiously annotated, published in one hundred and fifty-six different languages. We have books on geography, books on navigation, books on astronomy, books on medicine, books on law. Then there are serials constantly fluttering from the press, some of them adapted for sick rooms, some for splendid drawing rooms, some for lowly huts, some for busy factories. Every subject is discussed. Even bishops of the bench doff their lawn sleeves, and peers of the realm lay aside their coronets, to lecture in mechanics' institutes to popular auditories. There is scarcely a subject that is not discussed, from the economy of a bechive up to the evangelisation of a continent-from the manufacture of a pin to the discovery of the latest planet. Now, this resolution recognises this increase of general education and the expanded