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Indeed, I do not doubt that in this manner we ought to interpret that great passage of the beloved Apostle, in which he imparts the rule for addressing Christian infants, Christian youths, and Christian men. "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His Name's sake." "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father." The being made children of God's pardon and love in Christ by holy Baptism, the loving paternal relation of God, emblemed in the visible and warmly-felt love of earthly parents, this is the lore and training of the infantine age.

As Baptism to infants, so is Confirmation to boys. The limit between infancy and boyhood, difficult perhaps to strike in the abstract, is practically struck by sending boys from their homes, and from immediate parental training to school. At this point the ordinary average of parents feel themselves unable to conduct the education of their children further. The boy has outgrown the instruction of his mother, and his father is too much occupied, or hardly competent, to undertake the full labour of giving

him all the care and training he needs. It is also desirable that young boys should by this time begin to be weaned, by degrees, from the soft love and habits of their homes, and learn to take their places among their contemporaries. At this point, then, they pass, and, I apprehend, should always pass, as far as it is practicable, under the education of the clergy. In the higher orders of life they commonly do so. In the lower it may perhaps not be impossible that by degrees they may come to be intrusted to persons who, by the diaconate, or lower clerical orders, or at least by having received the episcopal licence to teach, may be regarded as forming part of the general clerical body, and, as such, properly trained and fitted to become Church teachers. Wherever children of this age are not taught by Clergy, there they should surely be occasionally visited by the parochial Clergyman; and, if they were regarded as catechumens, he would at once feel that they were really his charge, and that however well and religiously trained by their immediate schoolmaster, as his deputy, they should still look to

him as the person who, under the Church, was ultimately to testify to their several fitness for Confirmation.

Here, then, at the point at which boys are removed from home to school, might begin the preparation for Confirmation. From this moment they might be classed as catechumens.

It would be, I think, a great step gained, if we thus identified, in some degree, the practical arrangements of our common life with the recognized Church system. A great number of unexpected consequences of no slight importance and benefit would ensue: some of course, and immediately, and some by degrees and more slowly. The studies of the boys would imperceptibly, but quite necessarily, be modified to suit the change. Religious instruction must inevitably be more given, and equally inevitably, must be given practically, as well as theoretically. There would be, besides the lessons, whatever they might be, addresses of some kind or other to the conscience, the first helps to manly examination and control of self. The boys must also inevitably come to regard them

selves (at least, wherever the system was executed with any faithfulness) in a new light: not, as they often do now, as those who have nothing to do with religious matters or obligations, but as persons under preparation for a very sacred rite. Our schools would by degrees come to know of only two classes of boys, the communicants, and the catechumens.

7. One consequence of any considerable alteration, of the kind which I have mentioned, would no doubt be the administering of Confirmation at a somewhat earlier age than it has been latterly administered among us. The present practice is different in different dioceses, but generally, I believe, the age of candidates is not fixed lower than fifteen years old, while in some dioceses it is put off to sixteen. This minimum age, regarded in connexion with the triennial Confirmations, shows that the candidates for Confirmation usually range from fifteen to nineteen years old. But is not, if I may venture to speak so, is not this late time of Confirmation part of the system, above mentioned, under which Confirmation and other sacred Church

rites are made remedial, rather than strengthening? And when it is remembered too that the preparation for Confirmation is commonly the occupation, not of years, but of a month or two at the most, is it not to be feared that its actual remedial influence must be very small? What is to become of children from eight to fifteen? Are they not, if Confirmation be so long delayed, and so hastily prepared for, in danger of being left to contract habits of negligence and sin, which Confirmation when it comes will only very slightly check? Let it be remembered too, that the ceremony of Confirmation is a very short one; a few words and it is over. The faith, even of earnest young people, is, I think, somewhat tried by finding it so short and small. They have so short preparation, and slide back so easily into common thoughts, and find the old ways of living so ready to their minds, that this remedial Confirmation is apt to be soon forgotten. With the careless, sin being, as it were, already at full gallop, hardly checks its pace at Confirmation for a day or two.

Should not Confirmation then be brought into